Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205–180 BC) ascended to the throne of Egypt as a five-year-old after the assassination of his mother. Sosibius, Ptolemy IV’s wicked prime minister, had murdered Ptolemy V’s mother and took on the role as guardian for Ptolemy V. Sosibius ruled vicariously through Ptolemy V until he retired, and another guardian assumed the role – and the rulership of the kingdom. Ptolemy V only lived for 30 years, 25 of which were spent as a puppet king, mostly under the guardianship of others.
At the age of 14 in 196 B.C., his most famous act as king was the proclamation of a “decree … which reveals the increasing influence of Egyptian natives, remitted debts and taxes, released prisoners, pardoned rebels who surrendered, and granted increased benefactions to the temples.”1
The decree was discovered on this day in 1799 by a French soldier named Bouchard who was a part of Napolean Bonaparte’s army. The medium upon which the decree is inscribed is 3 feet, 8 inches high at its highest point, 2 feet, 5.8 inches wide, and 11 inches thick. It weighs approximately 1,680 lb.
When you think about it, that is a MASSIVE decree. It’s one we’ve all probably heard of. It’s called the Rosetta Stone, “a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing found near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles east of Alexandria.
“The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C. More startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000 years.”2
Decryption began in 1814 by Dr. Thomas Young. Jean-François Champollion picked up where Young left off in 1821. “When …[the] 31-year-old Frenchman who’d dedicated his life to the study of ancient Egypt, burst into his brother’s Paris office on September 14, 1822, he made an emphatic declaration—“Je tiens mon affaire!” (“I’ve got it!”)—then promptly collapsed. According to popular lore, the philologist, or scholar of historical languages, only recovered from his fainting spell five days later.”3 The code for understanding hieroglyphics had been cracked.
As I read and studied about this discovery, I couldn’t help but remember a time when there was no code or secret for deciphering the languages. They had been intentionally scrambled and confusion ensued. It all began in the Bible land of Shinar.
“And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. (4) And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:3-4) Bible commentators point out several sins committed by these people.
- Their building materials were an attempt to make a waterproof fortress for the next flood – which God said He would never do again. Therefore, they disbelieved His promises.
- They wanted to make a name for themselves, indicating their pride.
- They didn’t want to be scattered even though God had said they were supposed to fill the earth.
- They also seem to want to reach Heaven by their own efforts.
God’s response to their wicked disobedience is found in Genesis 11:6-9. “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. (7) Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. (8) So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. (9) Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.”
The early church faced a similar situation. They were to have scattered to share the Gospel. Instead, they all congregated in Jerusalem. Acts 8:1 tells us what it took to bring about their obedience. “And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.”
Don’t try to decipher God’s commands, picking them apart and looking for loopholes or parsing every nuance of His Words. Just obey. Psalms 119:60 should be our verse. “I made haste, and delayed not to keep thy commandments.”
1https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ptolemy-V-Epiphanes
2https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rosetta-stone-found
3 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/rosetta-stone-hieroglyphs-champollion-decipherment-egypt-180980834/
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