To celebrate the anniversary of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, Google has prepared a surprise.
We are talking about a stone that helped translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the writing system they used more than four thousand years ago. The Rosetta Stone is the key to understanding the symbols, with translation of the same text in hieroglyphics, Egyptian and Greek demotic writing, and now we have a new digital tool to help with the subject.
This is Fabricius, a new Google Arts & Culture tool that we can easily access from mobile or computer.
The first thing we will see is a tutorial so that we can understand the bases of this writing system. There are six steps to pass the first phase. Then we will have a game so that we can translate the words we want, messages and phrases that we can share with other people.
The third part is more oriented to the academic world. It offers new avenues for research, since until now it was necessary to manually search books for the keys to deciphering these symbols, Fabricius has an open source digital tool to support new developments in the study of ancient languages.
In this video you show it in more detail:
It uses machine learning to decode Egyptian hieroglyphs, and on the Google blog they comment on the details of how they have created a machine learning model that can give meaning to what a hieroglyph is.
Fabricius is available in English and Arabic, and its existence is made possible through collaboration with the Australian Center for Egyptology at Macquarie University, Psycle Interactive, Ubisoft, and Egyptologists from around the world.
You can enjoy Fabricius at this link.
