By Mursi Saad El-Din Many visitors of Egypt chose to write about certain cities and towns, normally of Ancient Egyptian past. The writer I am presenting this week, Robin Montgomery, chose to write about the city of Rosetta, explaining that there is more to this town than a stone. The writer starts by saying that those who have seen the Egyptian collection at the British Museum in London may have been struck by the permanent huddle around a slab of basalt. The Rosetta Stone, he says, inscribed with the virtues of Ptolemy 5 Epiphane, is neither beautiful, nor are the inscriptions on it of any literary value. However unearthed in 1799 by a French soldier by the name of corporal Bouchard, the Rosetta Stone brought about a revolutionary development in the understanding of ancient Egyptian civilisation: namely the deciphering of the hieroglyphs by Jean-Francois Champollion in 1821. What Bouchard was doing when he chanced upon the stone, sunk in silt and mud, is not entirely clear. History records that it was discovered during Napoleon's renovation of Sultan Qait Bey's 15th century fortification, which lies four kilometres to the north of Rosetta, commanding a view of both the sea and the river. The stone passed quickly out of the hands of the French and was later bought for almost nothing by a member of the rival British expedition in 1801. Shipped to London, it has remained there ever since. The city of Rosetta is much less famous than the stone bearing its name. Lying some 65 kilometres east of Alexandria along a picturesque route flanked by salt marshes, lakes and date plantations, modern Rosetta or Rashid in Arabic, now appears to slumber contently in the long shadow of its neighbour, but this has not always been the case. Rosetta occupies a strategic position on a wide branch of the Nile where it meets the Mediterranean. Trade, the provision of safe harbouring and access to internal waterways have always been important economic activities, especially in antiquity when the town was known as Bolbitine. Since maritime commerce was also the means by which nearby Alexandria gained its fortunes, the fortunes of the one city have always affected the other. E M Forster, in his guide to Alexandria puts it most succinctly: "So long as Alexandria lay dormant, Rosetta flourished; at the beginning of the 19th century its population was 35,000, that of Alexandria 35,000. In 1798 Napoleon's troops took Rosetta, in 1801 the British and Turks retook it, in 1807 the reconnoitring expedition of General Fraser was here repulsed. These events, unimportant in themselves were the prelude to an irreparable disaster... As soon as he [Muhammad Ali] developed the harbours there and restored the connection with the Nile water system by cutting the Mahmmodieh canal, Rosetta began to decay exactly as Bolbitine had decayed two thousand years before." The Bolbitine referred to by E M Forster, was the ancient Egyptian port, rapidly eclipsed by the rise of Alexandria founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. The Rosetta stone, a few other finds, and quite possibly some of the pillars that hold up the roofs of two of Rosetta mosques are all that remains of ancient Bolbitine. In a new form however, Rosetta was to make a come back. By the 9th century, with the silting up of the Canopic branch of the Nile, which linked Alexandria's harbours to the rest of the country's waterways, Bolbitine, now called by its Arabic name, Rashid, became increasingly important as a centre for trade and shipping. For three centuries it was the foremost port of Egypt. It is this period of flourishing commerce that has left such a profusion of mosques and elaborate merchants' houses in what is now a pleasantly relaxing provincial town with a population of about 50,000. The best way to catch a glimpse of the the history of the city is to visit the Rosetta Museum, housed in a building that is typically of the opulent style of the Ottoman residential architecture. It contains a small but varied collection of artefacts and some more dramatic depictions of Rosetta's history. One particularly life-size tableau portrays a scene from skirmishes that took place between General Fraser's expedition of 1807 and the local residents. Also of interest is the marriage agreement between Jacques- François de Menou, a French general under Napoleon who converted to Islam, and Sitti Zoubeida, the daughter of a bath- house keeper. The museum also houses a copy of the Rosetta stone alongside a bust of Champollion and a room devoted to Ottoman ceramic tiles and small pottery pieces.
