Today, The Grandma has been visiting Westminster,the Gothic abbey church in the City of Westminster.
Westminster Abbey,formally titled the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, is a large, mainly Gothicabbey church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster.
It is one of the United Kingdom's most notable religious buildings and the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English and, later, British monarchs. The building itself was a Benedictine monastic church until the monastery was dissolved in 1539. Between 1540 and 1556, the abbey had the status of a cathedral. Since 1560, the building is no longer an abbey or a cathedral, having instead the status of a Church of England Royal Peculiar -a church responsible directly to the sovereign.
According
to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, a church was
founded at the site, then known as Thorn Ey in the seventh century, at
the time of Mellitus, a Bishop of London. Construction
of the present church began in 1245, on the orders of King Henry III.
Since the coronation of William the Conqueror in 1066, all coronations of English and British monarchs have been in Westminster Abbey. There have been 16 royal weddings at the abbey since 1100.
A
late tradition claims that Aldrich, a young fisherman on the River
Thames, had a vision of Saint Peter near the site. This seems to have
been quoted as the origin of the salmon that Thames fishermen offered to
the abbey in later years -a custom still observed annually by the
Fishmongers' Company. The recorded origins of the Abbey date to the 960s or early 970s, when Saint Dunstan and King Edgar installed a community of Benedictine monks on the site.
Between 1042 and 1052, King Edward the Confessor began rebuilding St Peter's Abbey to provide himself with a royal burial church. It was the first church in England built in the Romanesque style. The building was completed around 1060 and was consecrated on 28 December 1065,
only a week before Edward's death on 5 January 1066. A week later, he
was buried in the church; and, nine years later, his wife Edith was
buried alongside him. His successor, Harold II, was probably crowned in
the abbey, although the first documented coronation is that of William
the Conqueror later the same year.
The only extant depiction of Edward's abbey, together with the adjacent Palace of Westminster, is in the Bayeux Tapestry.
Some of the lower parts of the monastic dormitory, an extension of the
South Transept, survive in the Norman Undercroft of the Great School,
including a door said to come from the previous Saxon abbey. Increased
endowments supported a community increased from a dozen monks in
Dunstan's original foundation, up to a maximum about eighty monks.
The abbey became the coronation site of Normankings.
None were buried there until Henry III, intensely devoted to the cult
of the Confessor, rebuilt the abbey in Anglo-French Gothic style as a
shrine to venerate King Edward the Confessor and as a suitably regal
setting for Henry's own tomb, under the highest Gothic nave in England.
The Confessor's shrine subsequently played a great part in his
canonization.
Henry VIII assumed direct royal control in 1539 and granted the abbey the status of a cathedral by charter in 1540, simultaneously issuing letters patent establishing the Diocese of Westminster.
By granting the abbey cathedral status, Henry VIII gained an excuse to
spare it from the destruction or dissolution which he inflicted on most
English abbeys during this period.
Westminster diocese was dissolved in 1550, but the abbey was recognised, in 1552, retroactively to 1550, as a second cathedral of the Diocese of London until 1556. The already-old expression robbing Peter to pay Paul
may have been given a new lease of life when money meant for the abbey,
which is dedicated to Saint Peter, was diverted to the treasury of St
Paul's Cathedral.
The abbey was restored to the Benedictines under the Catholic Mary I of England, but they were again ejected under Elizabeth I in 1559. In 1560, Elizabeth re-established Westminster as a Royal Peculiar -a church of the Church of England responsible directly to the Sovereign, rather than to a diocesan bishop- and made it the Collegiate Church of St Peter, that is, a non-cathedral church with an attached chapter of canons, headed by a dean.
Westminster suffered minor damage during the Blitz on 15 November 1940. Then on May 10/11 1941, the Westminster Abbey precincts
and roof were hit by incendiary bombs. All the bombs were extinguished
by ARP wardens, except for one bomb which ignited out of reach among the
wooden beams and plaster vault of the lantern roof of 1802 over the
North Transept. Flames rapidly spread and burning beams and molten lead
began to fall on the wooden stalls, pews and other ecclesiastical
fixtures 130 feet below.
Despite
the falling debris, the staff dragged away as much furniture as
possible before withdrawing. Finally the Lantern roof crashed down into
the crossing, preventing the fires from spreading further.
Westminster Abbey is a collegiate church governed by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, as established by Royal charter of Queen Elizabeth I dated 21 May 1560, which created it as the Collegiate Church of St Peter Westminster, a Royal Peculiar under the personal jurisdiction of the Sovereign.
The
members of the Chapter are the Dean and four canons residentiary; they
are assisted by the Receiver General and Chapter Clerk. One of the
canons is also Rector of St Margaret's Church, Westminster, and often
also holds the post of Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons.
In addition to the Dean and canons, there are at present three full-time
minor canons: the precentor, the sacrist and the chaplain. A series of
Priests Vicar assist the minor canons.
Today, The Grandma has visited Tower Bridge, aniconic symbol of London. Due to the East End developing rapidly in the late Victorian period, a new bridge was needed over the river. The fact that ships needed to be able to pass through it into the Pool of London,presented a bit of design challenge.
There are a lot of stories about Tower Bridge but The Grandma's favourite is that which explains how the height of the two towers on the bridge were utilised for defence in both World Wars. In World War One, a 3 inch gun was mounted on a platform above the roof of the easterly footbridge between the towers. During the biggest air raid of WW1 on the 19th May 1918 it shot down a German Gotha fighter. This was the only German machine shot down in London during WW1.
The Grandma has enjoyed a lot with these stories meanwhile The Morgans have continued theirweekofintense work with the completionof various Cambridge A2 tests. Thefamily has studied some Englishvocabulary about Rooms, Places and Jobs.
Tower Bridge is a combined bascule and suspension bridge in London builtbetween 1886 and 1894. The bridge crosses the River Thames close to the Tower of London
and has become an iconic symbol of London, resulting in it sometimes
being confused with London Bridge, situated some 0.80 km upstream.
Tower Bridge is one of five London bridges now owned and maintained by the Bridge House Estates, a charitable trust overseen by the City of London Corporation.
It is the only one of the Trust's bridges not to connect the City of
London directly to the Southwark bank, as its northern landfall is in
Tower Hamlets.
The
bridge consists of two bridge towers tied together at the upper level
by two horizontal walkways, designed to withstand the horizontal tension
forces exerted by the suspended sections of the bridge on the landward
sides of the towers. The vertical components of the forces in the
suspended sections and the vertical reactions of the two walkways are
carried by the two robust towers.
The
bridge deck is freely accessible to both vehicles and pedestrians,
whereas the bridge's twin towers, high-level walkways and Victorian
engine rooms form part of the Tower Bridge Exhibition, for which an admission charge is made.
The bridge was officially opened on 30 June 1894 by The Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, and his wife, The Princess of Wales, Alexandra of Denmark.
The
high-level open air walkways between the towers gained an unpleasant
reputation as a haunt for prostitutes and pickpockets; as they were only
accessible by stairs they were seldom used by regular pedestrians, and
were closed in 1910.
The bascule pivots and
operating machinery are housed in the base of each tower. Before its
restoration in the 2010s, the bridge's colour scheme dated from 1977,
when it was painted red, white and blue for Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. Its colours were subsequently restored to blue and white.
The Bank of England is the centralbank of the United Kingdom and themodel on which most modern centralbanks have been based.
Established in 1694
to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers
for the Government of the United Kingdom, it is the world's
eighth-oldest bank. It was privately owned by stockholders from its
foundation in 1694 until it was nationalised in 1946 by the Attlee
ministry.
The bank became an independent public organisation in 1998,
wholly owned by the Treasury Solicitor on behalf of the government,
with a mandate to support the economic policies of the government of the
day, but independence in maintaining price stability.
The bank is one of eight banks authorised to issue banknotes in the United Kingdom, has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales, and regulates the issue of banknotes by commercial banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The
bank's Monetary Policy Committee has devolved responsibility for
managing monetary policy. The Treasury has reserve powers to give orders
to the committee if they are required in the public interest and by extreme economic circumstances,
but Parliament must endorse such orders within 28 days. In addition,
the bank's Financial Policy Committee was set up in 2011 as a
macroprudential regulator to oversee the UK's financial sector.
The bank's headquarters have been in London's main financial district, the City of London, on Threadneedle Street, since 1734. It is sometimes known as The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, a name taken from a satirical cartoon by James Gillray in 1797. The road junction outside is known as Bank Junction.
As a regulator and central bank, the Bank of England
has not offered consumer banking services for many years, but it still
does manage some public-facing services, such as exchanging superseded
bank notes. Until 2016, the bank provided personal banking services as a
privilege for employees.
England's
crushing defeat by France, the dominant naval power, in naval
engagements culminating in the 1690 Battle of Beachy Head, became the
catalyst for England to rebuild itself as a global power. William
III's government wanted to build a naval fleet that would rival that of
France; however, the ability to construct this fleet was hampered both
by a lack of available public funds and the low credit of the English government in London. This lack of credit made it impossible for the English government to borrow the £1,200,000 (at 8% per annum) that it wanted to construct the fleet.
In 1700, the Hollow Sword Blade Company was purchased by a group of businessmen who wished to establish a competing English bank (in an action that would today be considered a back door listing). The Bank of England's initial monopoly on English banking was due to expire in 1710. However, it was instead renewed, and the Sword Blade company failed to achieve its goal.
In 1825–26 the bank was able to avert a liquidity crisis when Nathan Mayer Rothschild succeeded in supplying it with gold.
The last private bank in England
to issue its own notes was Thomas Fox's Fox, Fowler and Company bank in
Wellington, which rapidly expanded until it merged with Lloyds Bank in
1927. They were legal tender until 1964. There are nine notes left in
circulation; one is housed at Tone Dale House, Wellington.
The bank is custodian to the official gold reserves of the United Kingdom and around 30 other countries.As
of April 2016, the bank holds around 5,659 tons of gold, worth £141
billion. These estimates suggest that the vault could hold as much as 3%
of the 171,300 tonnes of gold mined throughout human history.
Last night, The Morgans and TheGrandma met PeterPan, the boy who wouldn't grow up, and visited London from the air, flying thanks to his magic and that of his friends like TinkerBell and the Lost Boys.
It has been an incredible experience full of good moments with a character who helps out daily at the Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Peter Pan is one of the most famous characters inmodern children's literature. Created by J. M. Barrie, he first appeared in the novel The Little White Bird (1902), but became internationally famous through the play Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up (1904) and the later novel Peter and Wendy (1911). Peter Panrepresents eternal childhood, freedom, imagination, andthe refusal to enter the adult world. Over time, he has become a major cultural icon recognized across generations.
Peter Pan is portrayed as a mischievous and adventurous boy who can fly and whonever grows up. He lives in the magical island of Neverland, a fantastical place inhabited by fairies, pirates, mermaids, and other extraordinary beings. There, Peter leads the Lost Boys, a group of children without families who share his adventurous lifestyle. Among his closest companions is the fairy Tinker Bell, while one of the most important human characters is Wendy Darling, a girl from London whom Peter persuades to travel with him to Neverland along with her brothers John and Michael. Together, they experience many adventures and confront Peter's greatest enemy, the feared pirate Captain Hook.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Peter Pan is his symbolic meaning. Peter embodies the freedom, creativity, and imagination associated with childhood, but he also reflects its selfishness and emotional immaturity.
Barrie often portrays him as brave, carefree, and charming, yet also arrogant and forgetful. Peter has difficulty forming lasting emotional bonds because he forgets people and experiences very quickly. This lack of memory is connected to his eternal youth: in order to remain a child forever, he must constantly forget what he learns and experiences. As a result, Peter is both enchanting and unsettling, combining innocence with emotional distance.
Barrie never provided a very detailed physical description of Peter Pan, leaving room for later adaptations to shape his appearance. However, Peter is usually depicted wearing clothing made from leaves or other natural materials, emphasizing his connection to nature and the wild. He is often shown carrying a dagger or small sword. His name also recalls the Greek god Pan, a mythical figure associated with nature, music, and untamed freedom. This connection reinforces Peter's role as a character who exists between the human and magical worlds.
The origins of Peter Pan are surprisingly melancholic. In Barrie's earlier stories, Peter was originally a baby who flew away from home to KensingtonGardens, where he lived among fairies and birds. When he later attempted to return to his family, he discovered that the window was closed and that another child had taken his place. Feeling abandoned and forgotten, Peter chose never to return to ordinary human life. This backstory helps explain why he rejects adulthood and prefers to remain forever in the fantasy world of Neverland.
Peter's ability to fly is another essential feature of the character. In some versions of the story, he can fly because he is part bird, while in others he teaches children to fly through happy thoughts combined with fairy dust. Barrie later explained that he introduced fairy dust partly because children who saw the original stage play sometimes attempted dangerous imitations of Peter's flying abilities. The magical explanation became one of the best-known elements of the story.
Over the decades, Peter Pan has appeared in countless theatrical productions, films, television series, and literary reinterpretations. Traditionally, the stage role was often played by women, especially in early twentieth-century productions. The character has also inspired psychological and cultural interpretations. The expression Peter Pan syndrome, popularized by psychologist Dan Kiley in the 1980s, refers to adults who resist responsibility and continue behaving in immature or childlike ways.
Peter Pan's cultural impact extends far beyond literature. Barrie famously donated the rights to the story to Great Ormond Street Hospital, a children's hospital in London that continues to benefit from certain royalties connected to the character in the United Kingdom. Statues of Peter Pan can also be found in several places around the world, especially the well-known sculpture in KensingtonGardens, London.
Ultimately, Peter Pan is far more than a simple children's character. Hesymbolizes humanity's desire to preserve the freedom and imaginationof childhood, while also revealing the emotional cost of refusing to grow up. This combination of adventure, fantasy, nostalgia, and sadness explains why Peter Pan has continued to fascinate readers and audiences for more than a century.
Today, The Morgans and The Grandma visited Neverland to search for the greattreasure that legend says maybe is hiddenon this island.
Neverland is a fictional islandfeatured in the works of J. M. Barrie and those based on them. It is an imaginary faraway place where PeterPan, TinkerBell, Captain Hook, theLost Boys, and some other imaginary beings and creatures live. Although not all people who come to Neverland cease to age, its best-known resident, Peter Pan,famously refused to grow up. Thus, the term is often used as a metaphor for eternal childhood (and childishness), as well as immortality and escapism.
The concept was first introduced as the Never Never Land in Barrie's West End theatre play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, first staged in 1904. In the earliest drafts of the play, the island was called Peter's Never Never Never Land, a name possibly influenced by the Never Never, a contemporary term for outback Australia. In the 1928 published version of the play's script, the name was shortened to the Never Land. Although the caption to one of F. D. Bedford's illustrations also calls it The Never Never Land, Barrie's 1911 novelisation Peter and Wendy simply refers to it as the Neverland, and its many variations the Neverlands.
Neverland has been featured prominently in subsequent works that either adapted Barrie's works or expanded upon them. These Neverlands sometimes vary in nature from the original.
The novel says that the Neverlands are compact enough that adventures are never far between, and that a map of a child's mind would resemble a map of Neverland, with no boundaries at all. Accordingly, Barrie explains that the Neverlands are found in the minds of children; although each is always more or less an island as well as having a family resemblance, they are not the same from one child to the next. For example, John Darling's Neverland had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it, while his little brother Michael's had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it.
The exact situation of Neverland is ambiguous and vague. In Barrie'soriginal tale, the name for the real world is the Mainland, which suggests Neverland is a small island, reached by flight. Peter -who is described as saying anything that came into his head- tells Wendy the way to Neverland is second to the right, and straight on till morning. In the novel, the children are said to have found the island only because it was out looking for them. Barrie additionally writes that Neverland is near the stars of the milky way and it is reached always at the time of sunrise.
In Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), a proto-version of Neverland, located in the Serpentine in Kensington Gardens, is called the Birds' Island, where baby Peter reaches by flight, or by sailing in a paper boat or thrush's nest.
Walt Disney's 1953 Peter Pan adds a star to Peter's directions: second star to the right, and straight on till morning. From afar, these stars depict Neverland in the distance.
The 2003 live-action film repeats this representation, as the Darling children are flown through the Solar System to reach Neverland.
In the 1991 film Hook, Neverland is shown to be located in the same way as the 1953 Disney film. While flying is the only way to reach it, the film does not show exactly how Captain Hook manages to get from Neverland to London in order to kidnap Peter's children, Jack and Maggie.
In Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006), by Geraldine McCaughrean, Neverland is located in waters known as the Sea of One Thousand Islands. The children get to the island by flying on a road called the High Way.
In Peter David's 2009 novel Tigerheart, Neverland is renamed the Anyplace and is described as being both a physical place and a dream land where human adults and children go when they dream. Additionally, there is a location called the Noplace which is cold and devoid of colour where people in a coma and those who are lost live.
In the 2011 miniseries Neverland, inspired by Barrie's works, the titular place is said to be another planet existing at the centre of the universe. It is accessible only via a magic portal generated by a strange sphere.
In the 2015 American film Pan, Neverland is a floating island in a sky-like dimension.
The passage of time in Neverland is similarly ambiguous. The novel Peter and Wendy mentions that in Neverland there are many more suns and moons than on the Mainland, making time difficult to track. One way to tell the time is to find the crocodile, and wait until the clock inside it strikes the hour. Although Neverland is widely thought of as a place where children don't grow up, it is made clear in Peter and Wendy that Lost Boys can grow up and are vaguely thinned out as punishment for doing so. Peter also explains to Wendy that fairies have short lifespans, another temporal confusion.
In Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006), by Geraldine McCaughrean, time freezes as soon as the children arrive in Neverland.
In the 2011 miniseries Neverland, in which Neverland is said to be another planet entirely, time has frozen due to external cosmic forces converging on the planet, preventing anyone living there from ageing.
So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!
Today, The Morgans and The Grandma have finished their theoretical training in English. They have been intense weeks full of hard work, a lot of effort, commitment, lots of smiles and lots of good times that will always remain in the memory of this fantastic family who will now face the last days of the course preparing Cambridge A2 exam models.
To learn a language there is nothing better than mixing with the community that speaks it, to understand what they are like, because language is the greatest living cultural reflection we have and if we understand how its speakers think, we will understand how they structure and use it.
The Grandma, who loves all languages, has recalled the importance of the Rosetta Stone, one of the great treasures of the British Museum, a stone that reminds us how important it is to know the past and learn from it, knowing that nothing past will ever return, but it will leave us knowledge and memories.
The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes.
The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences between the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.
The stone was carved during the Hellenistic period
and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple,
possibly at nearby Sais. It was probably moved in late antiquity or
during the Mameluk period, and was eventually used as building material
in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta.
It was discovered there in July 1799 by French officer Pierre-François Bouchard during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt.
It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern
times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslatedhieroglyphic script.
Lithographic
copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums
and scholars. When the British defeated the French they took the stone
to London under the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801. It has been on
public display at the British Museum almost continuously since 1802 and is the most visited object there.
Study
of the decree was already underway when the first complete translation
of the Greek text was published in 1803. Jean-François Champollion
announced the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts in Paris in 1822;
it took longer still before scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian
inscriptions and literature confidently.
Major
advances in the decoding were recognition that the stone offered three
versions of the same text (1799); that the demotic text used phonetic
characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did
so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the demotic (1814); and
that phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words
(1822–1824).
Three
other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later, and
several similar Egyptian bilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now
known, including three slightly earlier Ptolemaic decrees: the Decree of Alexandria in 243 BC, the Decree of Canopus in 238 BC, and the Memphis decree of Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC.
The Rosetta Stone is no longer unique, but it was the essential key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilisation.
The term Rosetta Stone is now used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.
The Rosetta Stone is listed as a stone of black granodiorite, bearing threeinscriptions...
found at Rosetta in a contemporary catalogue of the artefacts
discovered by the French expedition and surrendered to British troops in
1801.
At
some period after its arrival in London, the inscriptions were coloured
in white chalk to make them more legible, and the remaining surface was
covered with a layer of carnauba wax designed to protect it from
visitors'fingers.
This
gave a dark colour to the stone that led to its mistaken identification
as black basalt.These additions were removed when the stone was cleaned
in 1999, revealing the original dark grey tint of the rock, the sparkle
of its crystalline structure, and a pink vein running across the top
left corner.
Comparisons with the Klemm collection of Egyptian rock samples showed a close
resemblance to rock from a small granodiorite quarry at Gebel Tingar on
the west bank of the Nile, west of Elephantine in the region of Aswan;
the pink vein is typical of granodiorite from this region.
The Rosetta Stone
is 1,123 millimetres high at its highest point, 757 mm wide, and 284 mm
thick. It weighs approximately 760 kilograms. It bears three
inscriptions: the top register in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the second in the Egyptian Demotic script,and the third in Ancient Greek.
The front surface is polished and the inscriptions lightly incised on
it; the sides of the stone are smoothed, but the back is only roughly
worked, presumably because it would have not been visible when the stele
was erected.
The
Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stele. No additional fragments
were found in later searches of the Rosetta site. Owing to its damaged
state, none of the three texts is complete. The top register, composed
of Egyptian hieroglyphs, suffered the most damage. Only the last 14
lines of the hieroglyphic text can be seen; all of them are broken on
the right side, and 12 of them on the left. Below it, the middle
register of demotic text has survived best; it has 32 lines, of which
the first 14 are slightly damaged on the right side. The bottom register
of Greek text contains 54 lines, of which the first 27 survive in full;
the rest are increasingly fragmentary due to a diagonal break at the
bottom right of the stone.
The full length of the hieroglyphic text
and the total size of the original stele, of which the Rosetta Stone is a
fragment, can be estimated based on comparable stelae that have
survived, including other copies of the same order.
The
slightly earlier decree of Canopus, erected in 238 BC during the reign
of Ptolemy III, is 2,190 millimetres high and 820 mm wide, and contains
36 lines of hieroglyphic text, 73 of demotic text, and 74 of Greek. The
texts are of similar length. From such comparisons, it can be estimated
that an additional 14 or 15 lines of hieroglyphic inscription are
missing from the top register of the RosettaStone, amounting to another
300 millimetres.
In
addition to the inscriptions, there would probably have been a scene
depicting the king being presented to the gods, topped with a winged
disc, as on the Canopus Stele. These parallels, and a hieroglyphic sign
for stela on the stone itself, suggest that it originally had a
rounded top.The height of the original stele is estimated to have been
about 149 centimetres.
The
stele was erected after the coronation of King Ptolemy V and was
inscribed with a decree that established the divine cult of the new
ruler. The decree was issued by a congress of priests who gathered at
Memphis. The date is given as 4 Xandikos in the Macedonian calendar
and 18 Mekhir in the Egyptian calendar, which corresponds to 27 March
196 BC. The year is stated as the ninth year of Ptolemy V's reign,
equated with 197/196 BC, which is confirmed by naming four priests who
officiated in that year: Aetos son of Aetos was priest of the divine
cults of Alexander the Great and the five Ptolemies down to Ptolemy V
himself; the other three priests named in turn in the inscription are
those who led the worship of Berenice Euergetis (wife of Ptolemy III),
Arsinoe Philadelphos (wife and sister of Ptolemy II), and Arsinoe
Philopator, mother of Ptolemy V.
However,
a second date is also given in the Greek and hieroglyphic texts,
corresponding to 27 November 197 BC, the official anniversary of
Ptolemy's coronation. The demotic text conflicts with this, listing
consecutive days in March for the decree and the anniversary. It is
uncertain why this discrepancy exists, but it is clear that the decree
was issued in 196 BC and that it was designed to re-establish the rule
of the Ptolemaic kings over Egypt.
Napoleon's 1798 campaign in Egypt inspired a burst of Egyptomania in Europe, and especially France.
A corps of 167 technical experts (savants), known as the Commission des
Sciences et des Arts, accompanied the French expeditionary army to
Egypt.
On
15 July 1799, French soldiers under the command of Colonel d'Hautpoul
were strengthening the defences of Fort Julien, a couple of miles
north-east of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta, modern-day Rashid. Lieutenant Pierre-FrançoisBouchard
spotted a slab with inscriptions on one side that the soldiers had
uncovered. He and d'Hautpoul saw at once that it might be important and
informed General Jacques-François Menou, who happened to be at Rosetta.
The
find was announced to Napoleon's newly founded scientific association
in Cairo, the Institut d'Égypte, in a report by Commission member Michel
Ange Lancret noting that it contained three inscriptions, the first in
hieroglyphs and the third in Greek, and rightly suggesting that the
three inscriptions were versions of the same text.
Lancret's
report, dated 19 July 1799, was read to a meeting of the Institute soon
after 25 July. Bouchard, meanwhile, transported the stone to Cairo for
examination by scholars. Napoleon himself inspected what had already
begun to be called la Pierre de Rosette, the Rosetta Stone, shortly
before his return to France in August 1799.
After the surrender, a dispute arose over the fate of the French archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt,
including the artefacts, biological specimens, notes, plans, and
drawings collected by the members of the commission. Menou refused to
hand them over, claiming that they belonged to the institute. British
General John Hely-Hutchinson refused to end the siege until Menou gave
in.
Scholars
Edward Daniel Clarke and William Richard Hamilton, newly arrived from
England, agreed to examine the collections in Alexandria and claimed to
have found many artefacts that the French had not revealed. In a letter
home, Clarke said that we found much more in their possession than was represented or imagined.
Hutchinson
claimed that all materials were property of the British Crown, but
French scholar Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire told Clarke and Hamilton
that the French would rather burn all their discoveries than turn them
over, referring ominously to the destruction of the Library of
Alexandria. Clarke and Hamilton pleaded the French scholars' case to
Hutchinson, who finally agreed that items such as natural history
specimens would be considered the scholars' private property.
Menou
quickly claimed the stone, too, as his private property. Hutchinson was
equally aware of the stone's unique value and rejected Menou's claim.
Eventually an agreement was reached, and the transfer of the objects was
incorporated into the Capitulation of Alexandria signed by representatives of the British, French, and Ottoman forces.
It
is not clear exactly how the stone was transferred into British hands,
as contemporary accounts differ. Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, who
was to escort it to England, claimed later that he had personally seized
it from Menou and carried it away on a gun-carriage.
In
a much more detailed account, Edward Daniel Clarke stated that a French officer and member of the Institute had taken him, his student John
Cripps, and Hamilton secretly into the back streets behind Menou's
residence and revealed the stone hidden under protective carpets among
Menou's baggage. According to Clarke, their informant feared that the
stone might be stolen if French soldiers saw it. Hutchinson was informed
at once and the stone was taken away -possibly by Turner and his
gun-carriage.
The stone has been exhibited almost continuously in the British Museum since June 1802.
Prior
to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual decipherment,
the ancient Egyptian language and script had not been understood since
shortly before the fall of the Roman Empire.
The usage of the hieroglyphic script
had become increasingly specialised even in the later Pharaonic period;
by the 4th century AD, few Egyptians were capable of reading them.
Monumental
use of hieroglyphs ceased as temple priesthoods died out and Egypt was
converted to Christianity; the last known inscription is dated to 24
August 394, found at Philae and known as the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom.
The last demotic text, also from Philae, was written in 452.
The Greek text on the Rosetta Stone provided the starting point.
Ancient Greek was widely known to scholars, but they were not familiar
with details of its use in the Hellenistic period as a government
language in Ptolemaic Egypt; large-scale discoveries of Greek papyri
were a long way in the future.
At
the time of the stone's discovery, Swedish diplomat and scholar Johan
David Åkerblad was working on a little-known script of which some
examples had recently been found in Egypt, which came to be known as
demotic. He called it cursive Coptic because he was
convinced that it was used to record some form of the Coptic language,
the direct descendant of Ancient Egyptian, although it had few
similarities with the later Coptic script.
In
1811, prompted by discussions with a Chinese student about Chinese
script, Silvestre de Sacy considered a suggestion made by Georg Zoëga in
1797 that the foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions might
be written phonetically; he also recalled that as early as 1761,
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy had suggested that the characters enclosed in
cartouches in hieroglyphicinscriptions were proper names.
Thus, when Thomas Young, foreign secretary of the Royal Society of
London, wrote to him about the stone in 1814, Silvestre de Sacy
suggested in reply that in attempting to read the hieroglyphic text, Young might look for cartouches that ought to contain Greek names and try to identify phonetic characters in them.
Calls for the Rosetta Stone to be returned to Egypt were made
in July 2003 by Zahi Hawass, then Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme
Council of Antiquities. These calls, expressed in the Egyptian and
international media, asked that the stele be repatriated to Egypt,
commenting that it was the icon of our Egyptian identity.
He
repeated the proposal two years later in Paris, listing the stone as
one of several key items belonging to Egypt's cultural heritage, a list
which also included: the iconic bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum
of Berlin; a statue of the Great Pyramid architect Hemiunu in the
Roemer-und-Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim, Germany; the Dendera Temple
Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris; and the bust of Ankhhaf in the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston.
Yesterday, The Morgans and TheGrandma visited Wallsend, an Englishtown known for one of their favourite sons: Sting. The family had a fantastic day in the company of this exceptional musician, who made them walk on the moon.
Today, The Morgans have studied English grammar with the PastContinuous and Some & Any Compounds.They have finished the grammatical part and will spend more time listening, reading and speaking.
Sting, whose real name is Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, is an English musician, singer-songwriter, actor, and activist. He was born in 1951 in Wallsend, England, and became famous as the lead singer, bassist, and principal songwriter of the rock band The Police. The group achieved worldwide success between the late 1970s and early 1980s with hits such as Every Breath You Take, Roxanne, and Message in a Bottle.
After the breakup of The Police in the mid-1980s, Sting launched a highly successful solo career. His music combines many styles, including rock, pop, jazz, reggae, classical, and world music. Some of his best-known solo songs include Englishman in New York, Fields of Gold, and Shape of My Heart. Over his career, he has sold more than 100 million records both as a solo artist and with The Police.
Sting has received numerous awards and honours, including 17 Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe, an Emmy, and several Oscar nominations. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Police in 2003 and has also received recognition for his contributions to music and humanitarian causes.
Beyond music, Sting has acted in films and theatre productions and is known for his activism on environmental and human rights issues. He has also supported rainforest conservation projects and other charitable causes throughout his career.
The Police was a British rock band formed in London in 1977 by Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland. They became one of the most influential and successful bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s thanks to their unique mix of punk, reggae, jazz, and pop-rock.
Their debut album, Outlandos d’Amour (1978), included hits such as Roxanne and Can’t Stand Losing You, which helped launch their international career. Later albums like Reggatta de Blanc, Zenyatta Mondatta, Ghost in the Machine, and especially Synchronicity (1983) made them global superstars. Their best-known song, Every Breath You Take, became one of the biggest hits of the decade.
The band was admired for combining catchy pop melodies with sophisticated musicianship. Sting's distinctive vocals and songwriting, Summers's atmospheric guitar style, and Copeland’s energetic drumming created a sound that strongly influenced later rock and pop artists.
Despite their enormous success, tensions within the group led to their breakup in 1984, with Sting later pursuing a highly successful solo career. The band reunited briefly in 1986 and again for a major world tour in 2007-2008.
Overall, The Police sold more than 75 million records worldwide, won several Grammy Awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003. They remain one of the defining bands of the new wave era.
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