Much more than a decoding exercise centered on a single artifact, the race to decipher the Rosetta Stone brought humanists and scientists together in a wild and unpredictable intellectual adventure. Join writer and historian Diane Josefowicz as she presents the new and neglected archival evidence at the heart of this quest and situates the decipherment within broader nineteenth-century disputes about language, historical evidence, biblical truth, and the value of classical learning.

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Diane Josefowicz is the author, with Jed Z. Buchwald, of The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Artifact Provoked a Controversy Between Science and Religions(Princeton University Press, 2010) and The Riddle of the Rosetta:How an English Polymath and a French Polyglot Discovered the Meaning of Egyptian Hieroglyphs (Princeton University Press, 2020). A native Rhode Islander, she lives in Providence with her family.

EX LIBRIS: The Riddle of the Rosetta