与翻译有关，且最引人入胜的故事，是埃及象形文字的破译。
象形文字（这个词来自希腊语词源，意思是“神圣+雕刻/书写”）似乎是标志或图像文字，它们被发现刻在纪念碑、方尖碑和寺庙墙壁上，写在纸莎草和木板上，有大约 1,000 个不同的字符。它们非常古老，有些早在第二王朝（公元前28世纪）。然而，随着 4 世纪埃及皈依基督教和神庙祭司的消亡，象形文字不再被使用；随着宗教的改变，与过去的联系被切断，因此在随后的几个世纪中，成了没有人可以解读的象形文字。
研究罗塞塔石碑多年后，商博良Jean-François Champollion终于在 1820 年代完成了象形文字的破译工作。
罗塞塔石碑是破碎石碑的下部。它是黑色花岗闪长岩（一种花岗岩，上面写上白色文字），112 厘米 x 76 厘米，上面刻有公元前 196 年埃及孟菲斯颁布法令，用上三种语言。最初放置在一座寺庙中，可能在赛斯(Sais)附近。后来它被搬迁到尼罗河三角洲的罗塞塔镇(Rosetta)，并被重新用作建筑材料。
1799 年 7 月，被法国军官 Pierre-Francois Bouchard（拿破仑的埃及远征军的一名工程师）重新发现了。
当英国人击败法国人后，他们于 1801 年把这块石头带到伦敦。
现在在大英博物馆。
source: A. Parrot, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
-----
A most fascinating story relating to translation is the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Hieroglyphs (the etymology of the word comes from Greek, sacred + craved /writing) seem to be logographic or pictograms. They were found carved on monuments, obelisks, and temple walls, written on papyrus and wood, with some 1,000 distinct characters.
They were old, some from Second Dynasty (28th century BCE). However, as monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased as temple priesthoods died out and Egypt was converted to Christianity in the 4th century; with the change of religion, the link to the past had been severed., so much so that in later centuries nobody could understand the hieroglyphs any longer.
The decipherment of hieroglyphic writing was finally accomplished in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, with the help of the Rosetta Stone.
The Rosetta Stone is the lower part of a broken stele. It is a stone of black granodiorite (a kind of granite, lead-colored stone with scripts craved in white), 112 cm by 76 cm, inscribed with three languages of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC.
Originally placed within a temple, possibly at nearby Sais. It was relocated later to the town of Rosetta in the Nile Delta and reused as a building material. It was discovered by French officer Pierre-Francois Bouchard (an officer in the French Army of engineers of Napoleon's Egypt Expedition) in July 1799. When the British defeated the French they took the stone to London in 1801. It is now in the British Museum.
👷
