Editing Rosetta Stone (section)

===Greek text===
[[File:Porson 13 Jan 1803.jpg|thumb|alt="Illustration depicting the rounded-off lower-right edge of the Rosetta Stone, showing Richard Porson's suggested reconstruction of the missing Greek text"|upright=1.5|[[Richard Porson]]'s suggested reconstruction of the missing Greek text (1803)]]

The [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] text on the Rosetta Stone provided the starting point. Ancient Greek was widely known to scholars, but they were not familiar with details of its use in the [[Koine Greek|Hellenistic]] period as a government language in Ptolemaic Egypt; large-scale discoveries of Greek [[papyrus|papyri]] were a long way in the future. Thus, the earliest translations of the Greek text of the stone show the translators still struggling with the historical context and with administrative and religious jargon. [[Stephen Weston (antiquary)|Stephen Weston]] verbally presented an English translation of the Greek text at a [[Society of Antiquaries of London|Society of Antiquaries]] meeting in April 1802.<ref name="Budge133">[[#Budge69|Budge (1913)]] p.&nbsp;1</ref><ref name="Andrews13">[[#Andrews69|Andrews (1985)]] p.&nbsp;13</ref>

Meanwhile, two of the lithographic copies made in Egypt had reached the [[Institut de France]] in Paris in 1801. There, librarian and antiquarian [[Gabriel de La Porte du Theil]] set to work on a translation of the Greek, but he was dispatched elsewhere on Napoleon's orders almost immediately, and he left his unfinished work in the hands of colleague [[Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon]]. Ameilhon produced the first published translations of the Greek text in 1803, in both [[Latin]] and French to ensure that they would circulate widely.{{Cref2|H}} At [[Cambridge]], [[Richard Porson]] worked on the missing lower right corner of the Greek text. He produced a skilful suggested reconstruction, which was soon being circulated by the Society of Antiquaries alongside its prints of the inscription. At almost the same moment, [[Christian Gottlob Heyne]] in [[Göttingen]] was making a new Latin translation of the Greek text that was more reliable than Ameilhon's and was first published in 1803.{{Cref2|G}} It was reprinted by the Society of Antiquaries in a special issue of its journal ''Archaeologia'' in 1811, alongside Weston's previously unpublished English translation, [[Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner|Colonel Turner's]] narrative, and other documents.{{Cref2|H}}<ref>[[#Budge70|Budge (1904)]] pp.&nbsp;27–28</ref><ref name="Cracking22">[[#Parkinson69|Parkinson et al. (1999)]] p.&nbsp;22</ref>

{{Anchor|The Demotic text}}