Cartouche

We are studying ancient Egypt.  The other day we made cartouches.  A cartouche is  an oblong enclosure with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the hieroglyphic text enclosed is a royal name.  Since we live in Fairy Tale Land, it only seemed fitting to make cartouches with our royal names in them.

This was fun for everyone.  We learned that in 1798, Napoleon found the Rosetta Stone during some construction work.  It had three different types of writing on it, Hieroglyphics,  Demotic, and Greek.

 
It took many years of studying the hieroglyphics along with the two other languages to try to decipher the hieroglyphic code.

Scholars finally realized they had found the name of a Pharaoh in a cartouche. This was the break through they needed to break the code.

We then made book marks for everyone  in the family with their names on them.  If I would have known they would have had so much fun with this project, I would have purchased some shrink plastic or clay to make their names into bracelets.  But we've got to move on.  We can't stay in Egypt forever.  There is much more of this ancient world to discover...and five minds waiting to soak up every little detail.   (Maybe I'll make some for them as an end of the semester gift.  I'll let you know if I do.)