Lucas Wingell, Rosetta Thing, 2022, acrylic on paper, tea and plaster of paris, 25 x 20 cm
The Rosetta Thing
– Forgotten Artist Statement –
The Rosetta Thing is an art piece I have created inspired by the Rosetta Stone with text from different forgotten cultures using various languages and tools for writing. I use the word “Thing” because its ancient definition meant a gathering, especially for a political matter. The Rosetta Thing therefore represents a gathering of languages. The stone tablet is made out of plaster of paris with the text carved into it. The entire stone tablet is painted with tea. The bottom third of it has a sheet of paper glued to it, with the edges of the paper burned. The text on the paper was done with acrylic paint. The first one is a medieval Latin phrase. The second is the Elder Futhark alphabet, and the third is of a Tocharian artist crediting his work. My stone tablet is supposed to represent the forgotten ancient languages of the world; specifically three samples of Indo-European languages spoken in ancient Eurasia, as detailed below.
Rustic Latin Capitals were an earlier form of the Latin alphabet which had no punctuation, no spaces, fewer letters and no lowercase letters. The script was based on the Phoenician alphabet which developed from Egyption Hieroglyphs. Rustic Latin Capitals were created on stone with a chisel. Lowercase letters were created when the Romans decided to write on paper, including using punctuation and punctuation spaces. The writing says “servus humillimus, domine spectabilis’ ‘ which means “[I am your] most humble servant, [my] admirable lord “. That phrase would often be simplified to ‘servus’.
The second script is Elder Futhark. It was based on the Roman alphabet and was made for the Old Norse language and was adopted by nearby Germanic languages like Old English. The name Futhark comes from the first six letters which spell Futhark.
The third script is Tocharian which is a language from Asia that is now extinct. There are no descendants of it but we do have writing in Tocharian and it is related to other living languages therefore we know what it sounded like.
These three scripts represent not only the ancient languages but also the forgotten people and cultures of the past. In today’s changing world of global interconnectivity English is becoming the main language of communication. Perhaps many well established languages will disappear into the forgotten history of humanity.
Lucas Amadeus Wingell
