TIL at the British Museum that the Rosetta Stone has tiny writing mistakes on it that scholars just ignore now

I was checking out the back of the stone last week and a docent pointed out a misspelled word for 'temple' in the Greek section that apparently nobody bothered to fix because the decree was already carved.

2 comments

2 Comments

holly_sanchez751mo ago

And you know what, that's kind of how ancient history works in real life. People back then didn't have spell check or proofreaders for official documents, they just carved it and moved on. It's actually more real and human to see those little mistakes, makes the stone feel less like a museum piece and more like something people actually used.

the_ryan1mo ago

Yeah, "carved it and moved on" really does capture the no-nonsense attitude they had back then.