Site Of Ancient Egyptian "Great Revolt", Recorded On Rosetta Stone, Finally Discovered

Until now, this major rebellion was only known from text sources.

DR. KATIE SPALDING
Freelance Writer

Feb 3, 2023 9:38 AM



The Rosetta Stone. Image credit: Robin Dawes via flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)


The Rosetta Stone, the ancient slab that finally allowed modern archaeologists to crack hieroglyphs, is more famous today for how its message is written than what the message actually says. But just like any historical document, it contains a wealth of information about life in Ptolemaic Egypt – the good and the bad.

One such record contained on the stone concerns the Great Revolt: a decades-long Egyptian rebellion against Greek-Macedonian rule that began in 207 BCE and continued until 184 BCE. It’s an event that Egyptologists have known about for hundreds of years, thanks to historical texts like that on the Rosetta Stone – but it’s only now, with a new excavation at a site known as Tell Timai, that we finally know exactly where it happened.

“Archaeological evidence from the [revolt] is quite rare,” Jay Silverstein, project co-director and an archaeologist and senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, told The Art Newspaper.

“There are of course a number of decrees and inscriptions, like the Rosetta Stone, some historical accounts, and a few papyri with indirect references,” he explained. “But when it comes to finding the locations where the sword meets the bone, as far as I can tell, this is the first that has been recognised.”

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/site-of-ancient-egyptian-great-revolt-recorded-on-rosetta-stone-finally-discovered-67390