Two Macedonian scholars after several years of research have deciphered the middle text of the Rosetta Stone, which for 200 years had been a mystery for the world science. The MASA academician Tome Boševski and Prof. Dr. Aristotel Tentov from the Institute of Computer Technique and Informatics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Skopje, recently have deciphered the mysterious text, and their book Tracing the Ancient Macedonians' Script and Language is being promoted on 29 June 2006 in MASA (Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts).
207 years ago in Egypt a stone tablet was found with three scripts, 2,200 years old: with Egyptian hieroglyphs; with an unknown script in the centre, called Demotic; and with the Ancient Greek script. The stone was named Rosetta Stone, by the small Egyptian town Rosetta (el-Rashid). The Ancient Greek text was translated soon after the discovery, and on this basis in the year 1822 the French Orientalist Jean-François Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs.
According to Boševski and Tentov, the middle text is in the Macedonian language, with amazing similarity to identity of certain words with the present Macedonian dialects, by the 167 words presented. The script is syllabic of the type consonant-vocal. 25 consonants and 8 vocals have been identified. The basic symbols (consonants) are in 8 positions and, depending on the position i.e. the angle they are at, the syllable is read with the vocal pronounced, like a kind of iotting in the Old Slavonic language. There is a frequent use of the preposition na (of) and of the conjunction i (and), and the plural is made by adding i at the end of the word, as it is done today.
The middle text was, in fact, the original from which the translations into the Ancient Greek and the Ancient Egyptian are done descriptively. The Macedonian text does not correspond literally with the other two. For 207 years no one in the world has managed to decipher the middle text, since all start from the so called vocalization of the word, according to the languages in use in the region of Egypt . The two researchers have started from the premise that the language was Macedonian, i.e. from the Balkan area. The basis for such approach is the fact that for whole 302 years Macedonian d ynasties ruled with Egypt : the Macedonian Dynasty with pharaohs Alexander the Macedonian, his brother Phillip III Arrhidaeus, and Alexander IV (323-304 BC); and the Ptolemaic Dynasty (until the last Macedonian princess Cleopatra VII, 30 BC). The text is written as a decree of Ptolemy V Epiphanes Eucharisto, dating from 27 m arch 196 BC. Another two stone tablets have been found, written after the Rosetta Stone. According to the translation, in the Macedonian text the Egyptians are written as Agypts, the Macedonians as Living masters, and the Greeks as Danaians. Among the words similar to present-day Macedonian are the translation equivalents of: name, children, master, God, alive, hope, he, I, my, you, be, her, father, etc.
Taken from the Vest daily newspaper, issue 1801/24-06-2006
