“But how can those funny pictures and signs they are cutting be writing?” asked Rachel, watching a man who was graving strange marks on the granite blocks.
“Such was the writing of the ancient Egyptians,” replied Sheshà, “called in later days hieroglyphics, or secret writing, because, as ages passed, the meaning of the writing was forgotten, and men gazed at these strange signs and wondered what they meant, and what secrets were hidden from them by a language which no one could read.”
“And did they ever find out the secret?” asked Rachel, eagerly. “Can anyone nowadays read what is written on stones like these?”
“Yes. The secret has at last been discovered. For thousands of years it was hidden, but at last, in modern days, almost within the life-time of some old men and women still on this earth, the mystery was revealed by means of a magic stone.”
“I know!” cried Rachel excitedly. “That was the piece of marble I was looking at when I met you in the British Museum—was it a minute ago, or ages?” she went on, looking puzzled. “It all seems like a dream, somehow. But I remember Miss Moore, saying ‘This is the Rosetta Stone’—and I didn’t know what she meant. And then you said, ‘That stone is a gate into the Past,’ and I didn’t know what you meant, either!”
Again Sheshà smiled gravely as he looked down at her.
“I will tell you. Ninety years ago, a Frenchman was living in this mysterious land of Egypt; knowing no more of the secret writing on palaces and tombs and temples than do you, little maiden. But while he was at Rosetta, which is a town on the sea coast not far from where we stand, he found a broken block of marble—a fragment from what was once, perhaps, a mighty temple. Upon it he saw the secret marks he could not understand, but beneath it were some lines in Greek, which he and other people could read. Now, thought the Frenchman, ‘What if these Greek words should be the translation of those hieroglyphics above, which no one for thousands of years has been able to decipher?’ So he brought the broken stone away with him. And the scholars examined it, and at last, after patient study, comparing the Greek words, which they could understand, with the mysterious signs and pictures above, they learnt to read them also. And so, from that piece of black marble which now rests in the great museum of your great city of London, learned men have made Egypt give up one of its many secrets. All that is written on columns, walls and tombs, can now be read by the scholars who have studied the hieroglyphic writing of this ancient land, and translated it into English and French, and all the languages of men who live to-day. Was I not right to call ‘the Rosetta Stone’ a stone of magic, a gateway into the Past?”
PHARAOH IN HIS CHARIOT
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Rachel, drawing a long breath. “If that Rosetta Stone had never been found, people would still be looking at the—what did you call the writing? Oh yes, the hieroglyphics, and wondering what they mean, wouldn’t they? But you know, of course? You have always known.”