Monograph Archive
The Rosetta Stone
A decree in three scripts and the decipherment of Egyptian writing
Created in 196 BCE, the Rosetta Stone preserves a priestly decree issued during the reign of Ptolemy V. Its parallel inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphic, Demotic, and ancient Greek scripts gave modern scholars a comparative basis for studying Egyptian writing and helped enable the nineteenth-century decipherment of hieroglyphs.
The Antikythera Mechanism
A geared model of astronomical and calendrical cycles
The Antikythera Mechanism is a fragmented Hellenistic Greek geared instrument recovered from a shipwreck near Antikythera. Its dials, inscriptions, and surviving gear trains represented calendrical and astronomical cycles, including lunar phases and eclipse patterns. Modern imaging has clarified many functions, while missing components leave parts of the original display open to careful reconstruction.