Reading the Rosetta Stone

We begin in a long stone gallery in London at closing time, in front of a dark slab carved with three kinds of writing. Then we go back to 1822, to a study in Paris, where Jean-François Champollion lays two royal names side by side and slowly finds the sounds inside the signs. Along the way: the town of Rashid where the stone was found, the plaster casts that carried its words across Europe, an obelisk on a lawn in Dorset, and which way the birds face when you read.

The ending, given away now, per house rules: let your breathing go slow, and slow, and slower. There is nothing else to wait for, which is the point.

The first minute

Wherever you are as you listen to this. Whatever kind of day it has been. You can let it come to an end now. It is over. It asks nothing more of you. Let your shoulders sink down, away from your ears. Let the surface beneath you take your weight completely. There is nothing left for you to carry tonight. Let your hands grow soft. Let your jaw loosen. Let your breathing slow, all on its own. There is nothing here to watch for. Nothing to decide. Nothing you will need to remember in the morning. Tonight we are going…

Why this one works at night

Nothing here is solved quickly. A museum gallery at closing time, and a lamplit study where one sign at a time is gently worked out. The pace is patient and slow, and the whole of it is lamplit, cool, quiet. Nothing in it asks to be followed closely, which is what makes it easy to let go of.

“…Then Hebrew, and Arabic, and Syriac, and Persian, one after another, the way another child collects stones—”

The kind of sentence people fall asleep during