Rosetta
The
city of Rosetta (Rashid) is situated on the
western bank of the branch of the Nile
called “Rashid”, and is located 65km
northeast of Alexandria.
It is thought that a Temple
for Amon was built during the New Kingdom
Period. In the Greco-Roman Period the city
was called Balbotine and the Nile branch
then was known as “the Balbotine Branch”
In the Islamic period,
Rosetta was still known by this name, but it
was less important than Alexandria. The
Sultan
Qaitbay built a fortress
there, surrounded by ramparts for defensive
purposes; the Sultan Al Ghouri later built a
wall around the city.
After the Ottoman conquest in
the 16th century, and after the
decline of Alexandria, Rosetta became the
principal port of the northern coast until
the 19th century, but retained
its importance serving the trade between
Egypt, Turkey and other countries. Many
Wikalahs and merchant houses were
constructed.
Rosetta is considered as a
large open-air museum for Islamic
architecture. The great number of Islamic
monuments found here does not exist in any
other city, except for Cairo. Unfortunately
most of these unique monuments are
neglected, modern buildings surround them,
and the unplanned urbanization also affects
them badly, causing much damage. Therefore
it is necessary for a great national effort
to be made to save them, in order to revive
the historical character of the city.
Today Rosetta’s worldwide
fame is because of the finding of the
“Rosetta Stone” during the French occupation
of Egypt. In 1799, while extending a
fortress near Rosetta, a young French
officer named Pierre-Francois Bouchard found
a block of black basalt stone. It measured
3ft 9in long, 2ft 4.5 in wide, and 11in
thick, and it contained three distinct bands
of writing. The most incomplete was the top
band containing hieroglyphics; the middle
band was in an Egyptian script called
Demotic and the bottom one was in Ancient
Greek. He took the stone to the scholars and
they realized that it was a royal decree
that basically stated that it was to be
written in the 3 languages used in Egypt at
the time.
Upon Napoleon's defeat, the stone had become
the property of the English, under the terms
of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801), as well
as other artefacts that had been found by
the French. The stone was taken to England
and copies were made so that other people
could attempt to translate it. Scholars
began to focus on the Demotic script in the
middle band, because it was more complete,
and it looked more like letters than the
hieroglyphic pictures in the upper band. It
was essentially a shorthand version of
hieroglyphics that had evolved from an
earlier shorthand version of Egyptian called
hieratic script. Thomas Young (1773-1829),
an English physicist, was the first to show
that some of the hieroglyphs in the top band
were the sounds of a royal name - Ptolemy.
Then the French scholar Jean-François
Champollion (1790-1832) realized that the
hieroglyphs were actually the sound of the
Egyptian language and therefore laid the
foundations of our present day knowledge of
the Ancient Egyptian language and culture. |
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The
houses of Rosetta
Each house consists of 3 or 4
floors, with multi-level, wooden corbel
ceilings for added strength. They were built
of moulded, grouted bricks, and in the
façade, for decoration purposes, these
bricks were alternatively painted red and
black. Also the Mashrapiyas and windows, of
a different type of turned wood whether
Sahrili or Maymouni, also decorate the
façade.
1
-The ground floor usually
contains the “caravansary” or storehouse,
the stable, a Sabil (or fountain), and the
cistern.
-The 2nd floor was
reserved for men. It often has a separate
door and a courtyard surrounded by a number
of rooms.
-The 3rd floor was
reserved for women called Al-Hadir (the
place of sleeping); it consists of a main
hall (iwan) surrounded by several rooms, and
a private bathroom.
These houses often include a
room on the 3rd floor called the
“Al-Aghany” room (room of songs), in
which the women of the house sit, listening
and watching the entertainment, out of sight
of the men. This room contains cupboards in
one of its walls, with Klaw Khowarnaqates
and partitions of turned wood. These wooden
cupboards are often inlayed with ivory and
mother of pearl. In some houses, the walls
of the Al-Aghani room were covered with
tiles with floral decorations in yellow,
red, and green bearing an Andalusi effect,
as in the houses of Mouharam an Olwan
Arab Killy House (the
National Museum of Rosetta)
This is one of the most
famous houses in Rosetta, and the biggest.
It dates back to the 18th century
(XII A.H) and was the residential house of
Arab Killy who was an Ottoman governor of
the city.
It consists of 4 floors:
1-The ground floor, which
includes:
2-The 2nd floor,
reserved for the men, which includes:
3-The 3rd floor,
the domain of the women, which includes:
-
A courtyard, surrounded by a
number of rooms with windows of iron grills
-
The Al-Aghany (see above),
this room contains a beautiful cupboard,
inlaid with mother-of-pearl
4-The 4th floor, which
includes:
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