Year 3 - History
The Rosetta Stone and Egyptian writing
Ancient Egypt: what stayed the same across 3,000 years?
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
This unit evaluates the degree of change and continuity over 3,000 years. It also introduces pupils to the key features of ancient Egyptian civilisation, such as its location, religion, writing, burial practices and rulers.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to describe what Ancient Egyptian writing looked like and explain how it changed over time.
Key Notes
- In Rosetta, some hundred years before Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun, some soldiers dug up a large black stone.
- It was covered in both Greek and hieroglyphic writing; archaeologists used the Greek to translate the hieroglyphs.
- These hieroglyphs were pictures, rather than words, and there were more than 1,000 of them.
- Scribes would write in hieroglyphs to record things the pharaohs said or did and to compose religious messages.
- Over time scribes wanted to make hieroglyphs simpler and eventually they were only used for religious writings.
Vocabulary To Learn
- Rosetta: Rosetta is a city in Egypt where the Rosetta Stone was found
- translate: when someone changes one language into another, they translate it
- scribe: a scribe is someone who is trained to write or copy things
- religion: in Ancient Egypt, religion was a set of beliefs about gods, the afterlife and how to behave
- religious: something that concerns religion is described as religious
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- That there was one hieroglyph (picture) equivalent to each letter of the English alphabet.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Summarise this historical learning in two key ideas.
In Rosetta, some hundred years before Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun, some soldiers dug up a large black stone. It was covered in both Greek and hieroglyphic writing; archaeologists used the Greek to translate the hieroglyphs.
2. Define this history term and explain why it matters in this topic. 'Rosetta'
Rosetta is a city in Egypt where the Rosetta Stone was found.
3. Correct this common history misconception using evidence language.
Mistake: That there was one hieroglyph (picture) equivalent to each letter of the English alphabet. Correction: The Ancient Egyptians did not have an alphabet in the same way we do today. Hieroglyphs represented sounds and sometimes whole words. There were a lot more hieroglyphs than there are letters of the alphabet.
More Lessons In This Unit
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