title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys have sold 20 million records in the United States and had seven platinum-selling albums from 1986 to 2004. They are the biggest-selling rap group since "Billboard" began recording sales in 1991. In 2012, they became the third rap group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the same year, Yauch died of cancer and Beastie Boys disbanded. The remaining members have released several retrospective works, including a book, a documentary, and a career-spanning compilation album.


title: Beastie Boys

text: The members of the group were raised in Jewish households growing up. Prior to forming Beastie Boys, Michael Diamond was part of a number of bands such as the Walden Jazz Band, BAN, and the Young Aborigines. Beastie Boys formed in July 1981 when the Young Aborigines bassist Jeremy Shatan left New York City for the summer and the remaining members Michael Diamond, John Berry and Kate Schellenbach formed a new hardcore punk band with Adam Yauch.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In a 2007 interview with Charlie Rose, Yauch recalled that it was Berry who suggested the name Beastie Boys. Although the band stated that "Beastie" is an acronym standing for "Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence", in the Charlie Rose interview, both Yauch and Diamond acknowledged that the acronym was an "afterthought" conceived after the name was chosen. The band supported Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys, the Misfits and Reagan Youth at venues such as CBGB, A7, Trudy Hellers Place and Max's Kansas City, playing at the latter venue on its closing night. In November 1982, Beastie Boys recorded the 7-inch EP "Polly Wog Stew" at 171A studios, an early recorded example of New York hardcore.


title: Beastie Boys

text: On November 13, 1982, Beastie Boys played Philip Pucci's birthday for the purposes of his short concert film, "Beastie". Pucci held the concert in Bard College's Preston Drama Dance Department Theatre. This performance marked Beastie Boys' first on screen appearance in a published motion picture. Pucci's concept for "Beastie" was to distribute a mixture of both a half dozen 16 mm Bell & Howell Filmo cameras, and 16 mm Bolex cameras to audience members and ask that they capture Beastie Boys performance from the audience's own point of view while a master sync sound camera filmed from the balcony of the abandoned theater where the performance was held. The opening band for that performance was the Young and the Useless, which featured Adam Horovitz as the lead singer. A one-minute clip of "Beastie" was subsequently excerpted and licensed by Beastie Boys for use in the "Egg Raid on Mojo" segment of the "Skills to Pay the Bills" long-form home video released by Capitol Records. "Skills to Pay the Bills" later went on to be certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Berry left the group in 1982 (later forming Thwig, Big Fat Love and Bourbon Deluxe) and was replaced by Horovitz, who had become close friends with Beastie Boys.


title: Beastie Boys

text: The band also recorded and then performed its first hip hop track, "Cooky Puss", based on a prank call by the group to a Carvel Ice Cream franchise in 1983. It was a part of the new lineup's first EP, also called "Cooky Puss", which was the first piece of work that showed their incorporation of the underground rap phenomenon and the use of samples. It quickly became a hit in New York underground dance clubs and night clubs. After "Beastie Revolution" was later sampled in a British Airways commercial, Beastie Boys threatened to sue them over the use of the song, and the airline immediately paid them $40,000 in royalties.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Following the success of "Cooky Puss", the band began to incorporate rap into their sets. They hired a DJ for their live shows, New York University student Rick Rubin, who began producing records soon thereafter. "I met Mike first," Rubin recalled. "I thought he was an arrogant asshole. Through spending time with the Beasties I grew to see that they had this great sense of humour. It wasn't that they were assholes, and even if it was, they were funny with it." Rubin formed Def Jam Recordings with fellow NYU student Russell Simmons, and approached the band about producing them for his new label. As the band was transitioning to hip hop, Schellenbach was fired in 1984, with Diamond taking over on drums. In their 2018 memoir, Ad-Rock expressed regret for firing Schellenbach, which he attributed to her not fitting with the "new tough-rapper-guy identity".


title: Beastie Boys

text: The band's 12-inch single "Rock Hard" (1984) was the second Def Jam record crediting Rubin as producer (the first was "It's Yours" by T La Rock and Jazzy Jay). On July 22, 1986, Beastie Boys opened for John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols band Public Image Ltd., and supported Madonna on her North American The Virgin Tour. Then headlining with Fishbone and Murphy's Law with DJ Hurricane and later in the year, the group was on the "Raising Hell" tour with Run-DMC, Whodini, LL Cool J, and the Timex Social Club. Thanks to this exposure, "Hold It Now, Hit It" charted on "Billboard"s US R&B and dance charts. "She's on It" from the "Krush Groove" soundtrack continued in a rap/metal vein while a double A-side 12", "Paul Revere/The New Style", was released at the end of the year.


title: Beastie Boys

text: The band recorded "Licensed to Ill" in 1986 and released it on November 15, 1986. The album was favorably reviewed by "Rolling Stone" magazine. "Licensed to Ill" became one of the best-selling rap albums of the 1980s and the first rap album to go number 1 on the "Billboard" 200 chart, where it stayed for five weeks. It also reached number 2 on the Top R&B album chart. It was Def Jam's fastest selling debut record to date and sold over nine million copies. The fourth single, "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)", reached number 7 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. Although the group has sold over 26 million records in the US, this is their only single to peak in the US top ten or top twenty. The accompanying video (directed by Ric Menello and Adam Dubin) became an MTV staple. Another song from the album, "No Sleep till Brooklyn", peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart.


title: Beastie Boys

text: The band took the "Licensed to Ill" tour around the world the following year. The tour was troubled by lawsuits and arrests, with the band accused of provoking the crowd. This culminated in a notorious gig at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, England, on May 30, 1987, that erupted into a riot approximately 10 minutes after the group hit the stage and the arrest of Adam Horovitz by Merseyside Police. He was charged with assault causing grievous bodily harm.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In 1988, Beastie Boys appeared in "Tougher Than Leather", a film directed by Rubin as a star vehicle for Run-D.M.C. and Def Jam Recordings. After Def Jam stopped paying them for work they'd already done and were owed money for, Beastie Boys left Def Jam and signed with Capitol Records.


title: Beastie Boys

text: The second Beastie Boys album, "Paul's Boutique", was released on July 25, 1989. Produced by the Dust Brothers, it blends eclectic samples and has been described as an early work of experimental hip hop. It failed to match the sales of "Licensed to Ill," reaching number 14 on the US album charts,"" but later attracted acclaim; "Rolling Stone" ranked it number 156 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.


title: Beastie Boys

text: "Check Your Head" was recorded in the band's G-Son studio in Atwater Village, California, and released on its Grand Royal record label. The band was influenced to play instruments on this album by Dutch group Urban Dance Squad; with Mike D on drums, Yauch on bass, Horovitz on guitar and Mark Ramos Nishita ("Keyboard Money Mark") on keyboards. Mario Caldato, Jr., who had helped in the production of "Paul's Boutique", engineered the record and became a longtime collaborator. "Check Your Head" was released in 1992 and was certified double Platinum in the US and peaked at number 10 on the "Billboard" 200. The single "So What'cha Want" reached number 93 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and charted on both the Rap and Modern Rock Chart, while the album's first single, "Pass the Mic", peaked at number 38 on the Hot Dance Music chart. The album also introduced a more experimental direction, with funk and jazz inspired songs including "Lighten Up" and "Something's Got to Give". The band returned to their hardcore punk roots for the song "Time for Livin'", a cover of a 1974 Sly and the Family Stone song. The addition of instruments and the harder rock sound of the album could be considered a precursor to the nu metal genre of music to come out in the later half of the 1990s.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys signed an eclectic roster of artists to their Grand Royal label, including Luscious Jackson, Sean Lennon, and Australian artist Ben Lee. The group owned Grand Royal Records until 2001. Grand Royal's first independent release was Luscious Jackson's album "In Search of Manny" in 1993. Also in 1993, the band contributed the track "It's the New Style" (with DJ Hurricane) to the AIDS benefit album "No Alternative", produced by the Red Hot Organization.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys also published "Grand Royal Magazine", with the first edition in 1993 featuring a cover story on Bruce Lee, artwork by George Clinton, and interviews with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and A Tribe Called Quest's MC Q-Tip. The 1995 issue of the magazine contained a memorable piece on the mullet. The "Oxford English Dictionary" cites this as the first published use of the term, along with the lyrics from the band's 1994 song, "Mullet Head". That term was not heard in the 1980s, even though that decade has retroactively been hailed as the mullet's peak in popularity. The "OED" says that the term was "apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by US hip-hop group Beastie Boys". "Grand Royal Magazine" is also responsible for giving British band Sneaker Pimps their name.


title: Beastie Boys

text: "Ill Communication", released in 1994, saw Beastie Boys' return to the top of the charts when the album debuted at number 1 on the "Billboard" 200 and peaked at number 2 on the R&B/hip hop album chart. The single "Sabotage" became a hit on the modern rock charts and the music video, directed by Spike Jonze, received extensive play on MTV. "Get It Together" reached the top 10 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Also in 1994, the band released "Some Old Bullshit", featuring the band's early independent material, which made it to number 46 on the "Billboard" Independent Albums chart.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys headlined at Lollapalooza—an American travelling music festival—in 1994, together with The Smashing Pumpkins. In addition, the band performed three concerts (in Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C.) to raise money for the Milarepa Fund and dedicated the royalties from "Shambala" and "Bodhisattva Vow" from the "Ill Communication" to the cause. The Milarepa Fund aims to raise awareness of Tibetan human rights issues and the exile of the Dalai Lama. In 1996, Yauch organized the largest rock benefit show since 1985's Live Aid – the Tibetan Freedom Concert, a two-day festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco that attracted over 100,000 attendees.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In 1995, the popularity of Beastie Boys was underlined when tickets for an arena tour went on sale in the US and Madison Square Garden and Chicago's Rosemont Horizon sold out within 30 minutes. One dollar from each ticket sold went through Milarepa to local charities in each city on the tour. Beastie Boys toured South America and Southeast Asia for the first time. The band also released "Aglio e Olio", a collection of eight songs lasting just 11 minutes harking back to their punk roots, in 1995. "The In Sound from Way Out!", a collection of previously released jazz/funk instrumentals, was released on Grand Royal in 1996 with the title and artwork a homage to an album by electronic pop music pioneers Perrey and Kingsley.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In 1992, Beastie Boys decided to sample portions of the sound recording of "Choir" by James Newton in various renditions of their song "Pass the Mic". The band did not obtain a license from Newton to use the composition. Pursuant to their license from ECM Records, Beastie Boys digitally sampled the opening six seconds of Newton's sound recording of "Choir", and repeated this six-second sample as a background element throughout their song. Newton brought suit, claiming that the band infringed his copyright in the underlying composition of "Choir". The district court granted Beastie Boys summary judgment. The district court said that no license was required because the three-note segment of "Choir" lacked the requisite originality and was therefore not copyrightable. The decision was affirmed on appeal.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys began work on the album "Hello Nasty" at the G-Son studios, Los Angeles in 1995, but continued to produce and record it in New York City after Yauch moved to Manhattan in 1996. The album displayed a substantial shift in musical feel, with the addition of Mix Master Mike. The album featured bombastic beats, rap samples, and experimental sounds. Released on July 14, 1998, "Hello Nasty" earned first week sales of 681,000 in the US and went straight to number 1 in the US, the UK, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden. The album achieved number 2 rank on the charts in Canada and Japan, and reached top-ten chart positions in Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, France and Israel.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys won two Grammy Awards in 1999, receiving the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album for "Hello Nasty" as well as the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "Intergalactic". This was the first and, as of 2008, only time that a band had won awards in both rap and alternative categories.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Also at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards they won the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award for their contribution to music videos. The following year at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards they also won the award for Best Hip Hop Video for their hit song "Intergalactic". Beastie Boys used both appearances at the Video Music Awards to make politically charged speeches of considerable length to the sizable MTV audiences. At the 1998 ceremony, Yauch addressed the issue of Muslim people being stereotyped as terrorists and that most people of the Muslim faith are not terrorists. These comments were made in the wake of the US Embassy bombings that had occurred in both Kenya and Tanzania only a month earlier. At the 1999 ceremony in the wake of the horror stories that were coming out of Woodstock 99, Adam Horovitz addressed the fact that there had been many cases of sexual assaults and rapes at the festival, suggesting the need for bands and festivals to pay much more attention to the security details at their concerts.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys started an arena tour in 1998. Through Ian C. Rogers, the band made live downloads of their performances available for their fans, but were temporarily thwarted when Capitol Records removed them from its website. Beastie Boys was one of the first bands who made MP3 downloads available on their website. The group got a high level of response and public awareness as a result including a published article in "The Wall Street Journal" on the band's efforts.


title: Beastie Boys

text: On September 28, 1999, Beastie Boys joined Elvis Costello to play "Radio Radio" on the 25th anniversary season of "Saturday Night Live".


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys released "", a two-CD anthology of their works in 1999. This album reached number  19 on the "Billboard" 200, number 18 in Canada, and number 14 on the R&B/Hip Hop chart. The one new song, the single "Alive", reached number 11 on the "Billboard" Modern Rock chart.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In 2000, Beastie Boys had planned to co-headline the "Rhyme and Reason Tour" with Rage Against the Machine and Busta Rhymes, but the tour was canceled when drummer Mike D sustained a serious injury due to a bicycle accident. The official diagnosis was fifth-degree acromioclavicular joint dislocation; he needed surgery and extensive rehabilitation. By the time he recovered, Rage Against the Machine had disbanded, although they would reunite seven years later.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Under the name Country Mike, Mike D recorded an album, "Country Mike's Greatest Hits", and gave it to friends and family for Christmas in 2000. Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz's side project BS 2000 released "Simply Mortified" in 2001.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In October 2001, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Beastie Boys organized and headlined the New Yorkers Against Violence Concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In 2002, Adam Yauch started building a new studio facility, Oscilloscope Laboratories, in downtown Manhattan, New York and the band started work on a new album there. The band released a protest song, "In a World Gone Mad", against the 2003 Iraq war as a free download on several websites, including the Milarepa website, the MTV website, MoveOn.org, and Win Without War. The 19th and 20th Tibetan Freedom Concerts were held in Tokyo and Taipei, Beastie Boys' first Taiwan appearance. Beastie Boys also headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Their single, "Ch-Check It Out", debuted on "The O.C." in "The Vegas" episode from Season 1, which aired April 28, 2004.


title: Beastie Boys

text: "To the 5 Boroughs" was released worldwide on June 15, 2004. It was the first album the band produced themselves and reached number 1 on the "Billboard" albums chart, number 2 in the UK and Australia, and number 3 in Germany. The first single from the album, "Ch-Check It Out", reached number 1 in Canada and on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart.


title: Beastie Boys

text: The album was the cause of some controversy with allegations that it installed spyware when inserted into the CD drive of a computer. The band denied this allegation, defending that there is no copy protection software on the albums sold in the US and UK. While there is Macrovision CDS-200 copy protection software installed on European copies of the album, this is standard practice for all European releases on EMI/Capitol Records released in Europe, and it does not install spyware or any form of permanent software.


title: Beastie Boys

text: The band stated in mid-2006 that they were writing material for their next album and would be producing it themselves.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Speaking to British music weekly "NME" (April 26, 2007), Diamond revealed that a new album was to be called "The Mix-Up". Despite initial confusion regarding whether the album would have lyrics as opposed to being purely instrumental, the Mic-To-Mic blog reported that Capitol Records had confirmed it would be strictly instrumental and erroneously reported a release date scheduled for July 10, 2007. (The album was eventually released June 26, as originally reported.) On May 1, 2007, this was further cemented by an e-mail sent to those on the band's mailing list – explicitly stating that the album would be all instrumental:


title: Beastie Boys

text: The band subsequently confirmed the new album and announced a short tour that focused on festivals as opposed to a traditional tour, including the likes of Sónar (Spain), Roskilde (Denmark), Hurricane/Southside (Germany), Bestival (Isle of Wight), Electric Picnic (Ireland) and Open'er Festival (Poland). Beastie Boys performed at the UK leg of Live Earth July 7, 2007 at Wembley Stadium, London with "Sabotage", "So What'cha Want", "Intergalactic", and "Sure Shot".


title: Beastie Boys

text: They worked with Reverb, a non-profit environmental organization, on their 2007 summer tour, and headlined the Langerado Music Festival in South Florida on Friday, March 7, 2008. The band won a Grammy for "The Mix-Up" in the "Best Pop Instrumental Album" category at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in 2008.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In February 2009, Yauch revealed their forthcoming new album had taken the band's sound in a "bizarre" new direction, saying "It's a combination of playing and sampling stuff as we're playing, and also sampling pretty obscure records." The tentative title for the record was "Tadlock's Glasses", of which Yauch explained the inspiration behind the title:


title: Beastie Boys

text: On May 25, 2009, it was announced during an interview on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" that the name of their new album would be "Hot Sauce Committee" and was set for release on September 15 (with the track listing of the album announced through their mailing list on June 23). The album included a collaboration with Santigold who co-wrote and sang with the band on the track "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win".


title: Beastie Boys

text: In June, the group appeared at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and performed the new single from the album titled "Too Many Rappers" alongside rapper Nas who appears on the track. It would be the last live performance by Beastie Boys as a trio. The group would have toured the UK later in the year in support of the new record.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Speaking to "Drowned in Sound", Beastie Boys revealed that Part 2 was done. Mike D also hinted it may be released via unusual means:


title: Beastie Boys

text: On July 20, Yauch announced on the band's official YouTube channel and through the fan mailing list, the cancellation of several tour dates and the postponement of the new album due to the discovery of a cancerous tumor in his parotid gland and a lymph node. The group also had to cancel their co-headlining gig at the Osheaga Festival in Montreal and also another headlining spot for the first night of the All Points West Festival in Jersey City, New Jersey.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In late October 2010, Beastie Boys sent out two emails regarding the status of "Hot Sauce Committee" Pts. 1 and 2 to their online mailing list. An email dated October 18 read: "Although we regret to inform you that "Hot Sauce Committee Part 1" will continue to be delayed indefinitely, "Hot Sauce Committee Part 2" will be released on time as originally planned in spring of 2011." One week later, a second email was sent out, reading as follows:


title: Beastie Boys

text: The official release dates were April 27, 2011, for Japan; April 29 in the UK and Europe, and May 3, 2011, in the US. The third single for the album "Make Some Noise" was made available for download on April 11, 2011, as well as a limited edition 7-inch vinyl single for Record Store Day five days later with a Passion Pit remix of the track as a b-side. The track was leaked online on April 6 and subsequently made available via their blog.


title: Beastie Boys

text: On April 22, Beastie Boys emailed out the cryptic message ""This Sat, 10:35 am EST – Just listen, listen, listen to the beat box"". A day later, they live streamed their album online via beatbox inside Madison Square Garden.


title: Beastie Boys

text: The band was announced as an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in December 2011. They were inducted by Chuck D and LL Cool J on April 14, 2012. Yauch was too sick to attend the ceremony, having been admitted to NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital the same day, therefore the group didn't perform; instead Black Thought, Travie from Gym Class Heroes and Kid Rock performed a medley of their songs. Diamond and Horovitz accepted and read a speech that Yauch had written.


title: Beastie Boys

text: On May 4, 2012, Yauch died from cancer at the age of 47. Mike D told "Rolling Stone" that Beastie Boys had recorded new music in late 2011, but did not say if these recordings would be released. He also said that Beastie Boys would likely disband due to the death of MCA, though he was open to making new music with Ad-Rock and that "Yauch would genuinely want us to try whatever crazy thing we wanted but never got around to". In June 2014, Mike D confirmed that he and Ad-Rock would not make music under the Beastie Boys name again.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Founding Beastie Boys guitarist John Berry died on May 19, 2016, aged 52, as a result of frontotemporal dementia, following several years of ill health. He was credited with naming the band Beastie Boys and played guitar on the first EP. The first Beastie Boys show took place at Berry's loft.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Yauch's will forbids the use of Beastie Boys music in advertisements. In June 2014, Beastie Boys won a lawsuit against Monster Energy for using their music in a commercial without permission. They were awarded $1.7 million in damages and $668,000 for legal fees.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In October 2018, Mike D and Ad-Rock released a memoir, "Beastie Boys Book", recounting events throughout the group's history. The book was adapted into a documentary in April 2020, titled "Beastie Boys Story", directed by Spike Jonze and premiered on Apple TV+. The book and documentary were also complemented by the compilation album "Beastie Boys Music", released in October 2020.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In 1994, Yauch and activist Erin Potts organized the Tibetan Freedom Concert in order to raise awareness of humans rights abuses by the Chinese government on the Tibetan people. Yauch became aware of this after hiking in Nepal and speaking with Tibetan refugees. The events became annual, and shortly after went international with acts such as Live, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Rage Against the Machine, The Smashing Pumpkins, and U2.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Originally a hardcore punk band, Beastie Boys had largely abandoned the genre in favor of hip hop and rap rock by the time work began on their debut studio album "Licensed to Ill". The group mixed elements of hip hop, punk, funk, electro, jazz and Latin music into their music. They have also been described as alternative hip hop, and punk rap.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Around the time of the release of their debut album, "Licensed to Ill", Mike D started to appear on stage and in publicity photographs wearing a large Volkswagen emblem attached to a chain-link necklace. This started a rash of thefts of the emblem from vehicles around the world as fans tried to emulate him. A controversial concert in Columbus, Georgia in 1987 led to the passage of a lewdness ordinance in that city.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys are considered very influential in both the hip hop and rock music scenes, with artists such as Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, Hed PE, , Sublime, and Blur citing them as an influence. Beastie Boys have had four albums reach the top of the "Billboard" album charts ("Licensed to Ill", "Ill Communication", "Hello Nasty" and "To the 5 Boroughs") since 1986. In the November 2004 issue, "Rolling Stone" named "Sabotage" the 475th song on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In their April 2005 issue, "Rolling Stone" ranked them number 77 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. VH1 ranked them number 89 on their list of their 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. On September 27, 2007, it was announced that Beastie Boys were one of the nine nominees for the 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions. In December 2011, they were announced to be official 2012 inductees.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys have many high-profile longtime fans, including UFC president Dana White, who has a hand-signed bass guitar signed by all three members in his office and a copy of the Beastie Boys book. Speaking on the death of Adam Yauch, White said, "I seriously haven't been impacted by a death in a long time like I was with the Beastie Boys". Actor Seth Rogen, who appeared in the video for "Make Some Noise", also said, "I'm a huge Beastie Boys fan and they just called and asked if I wanted to be a part of it, and I said yes without hesitation. I didn't need to hear anything. I didn't need to see anything, any concepts. I was just like, 'I will literally do anything you ask me to do". Ben Stiller was seen in the crowd for the DVD release "Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!" and featured Horovitz in his movie "While We're Young", where he said, "I'm a huge Beastie Boys fan, so doing that, for me, was beyond anything". Eminem was highly influenced by the Beastie Boys and cited them alongside LL Cool J as being the reason he got into rap. During an interview with MTV after the death of Yauch, he said, "Adam Yauch brought a lot of positivity into the world and I think it's obvious to anyone how big of an influence the Beastie Boys were on me and so many others. They are trailblazers and pioneers and Adam will be sorely missed. My thoughts and prayers are with his family, Mike D., and Ad-Rock." His album cover for "Kamikaze" paid homage to "Licensed to Ill" and he also paid homage in his "Berzerk" video. In an interview with Rolling Stone, "Beavis and Butt-Head" creator Mike Judge acknowledged he was a fan of the band, citing his favorite song as "Fight for Your Right", as the Beastie Boys appeared on "Beavis and Butt-Head" on numerous occasions. Kid Rock wrote an in-depth tribute to Yauch after being influenced by the band, which said, "I thought I was the 4th member of Beastie Boys in 7th grade. You couldn't tell me I wasn't. The first time I ever saw them on stage was a very early show of theirs before Licensed to Ill came out, opening for Run DMC at Joe Louis Arena. My jaw dropped to the floor!".


title: Beastie Boys

text: In 2020, Spin Magazine ranked Beastie Boys as the 12th most influential artist of the previous 35 years.


title: Beastie Boys

text: In 2003, Beastie Boys were involved in the landmark sampling decision, "Newton v. Diamond". In that case, a federal judge ruled that the band was not liable for sampling James Newton's "Choir" in their track, "Pass the Mic". The sample used is the six-second flute stab. In short, Beastie Boys cleared the sample but obtained only the rights to use the sound recording and not the composition rights to the song "Choir". In the decision, the judge found that:


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gilbert Jeremy Gottfried (February 28, 1955 – April 12, 2022) was an American stand-up comedian and actor, known for his exaggerated shrill voice, strong New York accent, and his edgy, often controversial, sense of humor. His numerous roles in film and television include voicing Iago in the "Aladdin" animated films and series, Digit LeBoid in "Cyberchase", Kraang Subprime in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", and the Aflac Duck. He was also known for his role as Mr. Peabody in the "Problem Child" film series.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gottfried hosted the podcast "Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast" (2014–2022), which featured discussions of classic films and celebrity interviews, most often with veteran actors, comedians, musicians, and comedy writers. The documentary "Gilbert" (2017) explored his life and career; it won the Special Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2017 deadCENTER Film Festival.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gilbert Jeremy Gottfried was born on February 28, 1955, in the Coney Island section of the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the son of homemaker Lillian Zimmerman and hardware store owner Max Gottfried. His father and grandfather ran the store, above which the family lived. He was raised in a Jewish family but later said of his unusual upbringing, "I ate pork. We weren't that aware of the holidays or anything like that, but were aware of being Jewish. It's like I kind of knew that even though I was never bar mitzvahed and we didn't follow the holidays, I knew that if the Nazis came back, I'd be in the same train coach with everyone else." He was the younger brother of Karen and photographer Arlene Gottfried (1950–2017). From Coney Island, the family moved to Brooklyn's Crown Heights, followed by Borough Park.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gottfried's first routine on stage was at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village, during one of its Hootenanny Night events, when he was fifteen. His two sisters accompanied him, having thought the performances their brother did for the family were good enough for the stage and encouraged Gottfried to try it out. His early routines focused on impressions of old time actors and celebrities, including Boris Karloff and Humphrey Bogart. From there he worked the local comedy circuit and became known in the area as a "comedian's comedian", and started to perform edgier material when he got bored of his usual routines. One such incident occurred when Gottfried opened for singer Belinda Carlisle, which was attended by younger girls and their mothers: "I tried doing my regular act for about five minutes, then I just launched into the filthiest stuff I could think of. And the next day, I got a call from my agent saying 'Everybody there loved you', which is show business talk for, 'You're fired.'


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: In 1980, "Saturday Night Live" was being retooled with a new staff and new comedians; the producers noticed Gottfried and hired him as a cast member for season 6. Gottfried's persona during "SNL" sketches was very different from his later characterization: he rarely spoke in his trademark obnoxiously screeching voice and never squinted. During his 12-episode stint, he was seldom used in sketches. Gottfried recalled that a low point was having to play a corpse in a sketch about a sports organist hired to play inappropriate music at a funeral. He did have one recurring character (Leo Waxman, husband to Denny Dillon's Pinky Waxman on the recurring talk show sketch, "What's It All About?") and two celebrity impersonations: David A. Stockman and Roman Polanski.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: In April 1987, Gottfried headlined a half-hour comedy special that aired as part of the "Cinemax Comedy Experiment" series. It was followed by the sitcom pilot "Norman's Corner", co-written by Larry David prior to creating "Seinfeld", which saw Gottfried as the titular character. Gottfried played accountant Sidney Bernstein in the 1987 film "Beverly Hills Cop II", in which he reunited with friend and fellow "SNL" alumnus Eddie Murphy. Also in 1987, Gottfried made his debut appearance on "The Howard Stern Show". He went on to make over 100 appearances on the radio show over the next 25 years.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Although not a regular, Gottfried appeared in "The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys", as well as the voice of Jerry the Belly Button Elf on "Ren and Stimpy". Three of his most prominent roles came in 1990, 1991, and 1992, when he was cast as the adoption agent Igor Peabody in "Problem Child" and "Problem Child 2" and the parrot Iago in "Aladdin". When asked how he prepared for the role, Gottfried said, "I did the whole DeNiro thing. I moved to South America! I lived in the trees!" Gottfried reprised the role in "The Return of Jafar", "Aladdin and the King of Thieves", the television series and various related media, such as "Kingdom Hearts" and "House of Mouse". However, the character was ultimately recast to Alan Tudyk for the 2019 remake. He also voiced Berkeley Beetle in 1994's "Thumbelina". He was the host of the Saturday edition of "USA Up All Night" for its entire run from 1989 to 1998.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gottfried was a recurring guest star during the Tom Bergeron era of "The Hollywood Squares" and became the center of attention in a bizarre episode that aired October 1, 1999. In this episode, the two contestants made nine consecutive incorrect guesses, six of which were to be game-deciding questions asked to Gottfried. Magician Penn Jillette, who was a guest alongside his magic partner Teller on the same episode, berated a contestant earlier for giving an incorrect guess by shouting, "You fool!" Gottfried himself then began to use the phrase, with most of the other stars (including Bergeron himself) eventually joining in with every successive wrong guess, beginning with the second question he was asked. As a consequence, it took the episode's entire half hour to play only one game. Appropriately, the episode became known as the "You Fool!" episode. Gottfried was temporarily fired from "Hollywood Squares" after this incident, returning about a month later.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gottfried provided the voice of the duck in the Aflac commercials and Digit in "Cyberchase", as well as the crazed dentist Dr. Bender and his son Wendell in "The Fairly OddParents", and Mister Mxyzptlk (pronounced "Mikz-yez-pit-lik") in "". He reprised his role as Mxyzptlk in "", "Justice League Action", and "Lego DC Super-Villains". He also played a nasty wisecracking criminal genius named Nick Knack in two episodes of "Superboy" (he also co-wrote an issue of "", which featured Nick Knack's origin). Gottfried made regular appearances on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno".


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: In 2004, Comedy Central featured Gottfried's stand-up material for "Shorties Watchin' Shorties". Gottfried was part of an online advertising campaign for Microsoft's Office XP software, showing, in a series of Flash-animated cartoons, that the Clippy office assistant would be removed. In 2006, Gottfried topped the "Boston Phoenix"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s tongue-in-cheek list of the world's 100 Unsexiest Men. In April 2006, Gottfried performed with the University of Pennsylvania's Mask and Wig Club in their annual Intercollegiate Comedy Festival. Also in 2006, he made an appearance on the "Let's Make a Deal" portion of "Gameshow Marathon" (as a baby in a large high chair, he says "Hey Ricki, I think I need my diaper changed!"), and in the Dodge Viper in the big deal (where he tells the contestants "What were you thinking?!" because neither one picked it). He also guest-starred in "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" as Santa Claus in the one-hour Christmas Special. He voiced Rick Platypus in an episode of "My Gym Partner's a Monkey" entitled "That Darn Platypus".


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: He appeared as Peter's horse in an episode of "Family Guy" entitled "Boys Do Cry" (in which Peter Griffin is enthused to learn that Gottfried is providing the horse's voice). He also guest-starred in "Hannah Montana" as Barny Bittmen. In January 2009, Gottfried worked again with David Faustino for an episode of Faustino's show "Star-ving". In 2011, Gottfried appeared in the episode "Lost Traveller" on "" as Leo Gerber, a sarcastic computer professional working for the NYPD's Technical Assistance Response Unit, which producer Warren Leight said could become a recurring character. Gottfried read a section from the hit book "Fifty Shades of Grey" in a June 2012 YouTube video, which was created with the aim of using Gottfried's trademark voice to make fun of the book's graphic sexual content.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: In 2013, Gottfried became a member of "Team Rachael" on the second season of Food Network's "". In March that year he appeared on ABC's "Celebrity Wife Swap". He swapped wives with Alan Thicke. He was also a commentator on "".


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: On May 28, 2014, Sideshow Network premiered "Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast", an interview series where Gottfried and his co-host Frank Santopadre discussed classic films and talk to "Hollywood legends and behind-the-scenes talents" who shaped Gottfried's childhood and influenced his comedy. His first guest was Dick Cavett. His final guest was Brenda Vaccaro, in a two part episode released on April 25 and May 2, 2022. Gottfried would be hospitalized a few hours after the episode's recording. The fate of the podcast is uncertain at this time, following Gottfried's death.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gottfried was the third contestant fired during the fourteenth season of the NBC reality show "The Celebrity Apprentice". In 2016 he played the 'Pig Man' in a comedy/fantasy film "Abnormal Attraction". In 2017 he appeared as himself in "Episodes", where a contestant on a fictional TV endurance game show is penalized with "48 hours of Gilbert Gottfried".


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: On June 10, 2018, Gottfried appeared in a special segment of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" where, for UK viewers only, a segment about the UK's law restricting broadcast of debates from the Houses of Parliament was replaced by five minutes of him reading "3-star Yelp reviews" along with host John Oliver telling the audience "you brought this on yourself because of your stupid law". He returned on November 18, 2018, in the show's last episode of the year to read out extracts from the Brexit agreement, again for UK viewers only. He had previously performed as "the real voice of Jared Kushner" in dubbed film clips on the show.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: On July 31, 2019, Gottfried appeared as a guest in episode 170 of the "Angry Video Game Nerd". On January 10, 2022, he guest-starred as God on the season finale of "Smiling Friends".


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: In 2022 he appears in the Somebody Feed Phil season 6 episode Croatia in the ‘Joke for Max’ segment on a video call with the show host Philip Rosenthal where he tells a few jokes in honour of Phils late father Max.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Released in October 2022,"The Paloni Show! Halloween Special" includes a skit with Gottfried voicing an "apartment manager who doesn't want to deal with his tenants." Some report this as his last performance.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Danny Gallagher of the "Dallas Observer" wrote that "Gottfried has one of the most original formulas in the history of comedy", adding, "You don't just laugh at the punchline when Gilbert Gottfried tells a joke. You laugh at the setup. You laugh at his comments about the joke. You even laugh at the segues between his jokes." Eric Falwell wrote of his influence in "The Atlantic": "Gottfried's work as a stand-up shaped many comics today, whether they would say as much or not. He was a figure who ... pushed stand-up to move beyond the realm of the merely observational and create space for the absurd."


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gottfried was known for speaking in a loud and grating voice, which was not his natural speaking voice. Mark Binneli of "Rolling Stone" described Gottfried as a "squinting, squawking mass of contradictions", noting his status as "one of America's filthiest stand-ups" while simultaneously being "one of the most successful voice-over artists in children's entertainment". He was also known for joking about recent tragedies, prompting fellow comedian Bill Maher to dub him the "King of Too Soon". In a July 2012 op-ed for CNN, he wrote, "I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing. Nowadays, we would say, 'How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.'"


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: At the 43rd Primetime Emmy Awards, Gottfried told a series of masturbation jokes in reference to Paul Reubens's arrest for masturbating in an adult theater. Viewers in the Eastern time zone saw the entire set live, but Fox censored the broadcast for the West Coast delay. Fox issued an apology, calling the jokes "irresponsible and insulting". Gottfried said that producers stated he would not be invited back, and "Rolling Stone" wrote that the monologue resulted in his blacklisting.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: During his monologue at a Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner three weeks after the September 11 attacks, Gottfried joked that he had intended to catch a plane but could not get a direct flight because "they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first". This was one of the first public examples of 9/11 humor. Audience members responded with hisses and a cry of "too soon!". Realizing he had lost the audience "bigger than anybody has ever lost an audience", Gottfried abandoned his prepared remarks and launched into the famous Aristocrats joke, which won back the audience. Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza used Gottfried's monologue as a segment in their 2005 film "The Aristocrats".


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: In March 2011, Gottfried tweeted twelve jokes about the earthquake disaster in Japan. Aflac, which does 75% of its business in Japan, responded by dismissing Gottfried from voicing its mascot and announcing a casting call for his replacement. He was replaced by Daniel McKeague (who did an impression of Gottfried) on April 26, 2011.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast launched on June 1, 2014. GGACP was a long form interview podcast and was hosted by not only Gottfried, but his friend and professional comedy writer, Frank Santopadre. Gottfried's wife, Dara, served as executive producer, and it was recorded weekly until his death in 2022.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Standard episodes ran about an hour in length and featured interviews with a variety of entertainers, writers, and directors including: Dick Cavett. Tippi Hedren, George Takei, Brenda Vaccaro, Bob Costas, Susie Essman, Dick Van Dyke, Alan Arkin, Phil Rosenthal, Lee Grant and many more. Several guests made more than one appearance, but none more often than Mario Cantone. Cantone would annually help Gottfried and Santopadre celebrate the Christmas season with a mixture of songs, jokes and cheer.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Its title, the 'Amazing Colossal Podcast,' is a reference to the 1957 black-and-white science fiction film "The Amazing Colossal Man" directed by Bert I. Gordon. Gottfried's chaotic comedic riffing and Santopadre's earnest interviewing offered the show a style all its own.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Starting in 2015, the podcast featured shorter mini-episodes around half an hour in length on more specific topics like particular character actors, films, or songs. The mini-episodes were later rebranded as Amazing Colossal Obsessions.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: In 1992, Gottfried suffered from a burst appendix and was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. His doctors informed him that had another hour passed without treatment, he would have died.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: In the late 1990s, Gottfried met Dara Kravitz at a Grammy Awards party. They were married in 2007 and had a daughter named Lily and a son named Max, both were named after his parents. He was a longtime resident of the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gottfried was known for his frugality. He often walked instead of using public transportation, because he did not want to pay the fares; illustrator Drew Friedman also recalled that Gottfried would visit his apartment unannounced in the late 1980s to watch films on his VCR, because he did not want to buy one himself.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: On April 12, 2022, at the age of 67, Gottfried died in Manhattan from recurrent ventricular tachycardia, complicated by type II myotonic dystrophy. He had not made his condition public.


title: Gilbert Gottfried

text: Gottfried was scheduled to appear as a special guest at the Ebertfest film festival to discuss the documentary film about him, "Gilbert". In the aftermath of his death, Ebertfest announced it would be dedicating their 2022 event to the memories of Gottfried and Sidney Poitier. He was also posthumously inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences between the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The stone was carved during the Hellenistic period and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at Sais. It was probably moved in late antiquity or during the Mamluk period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. It was found there in July 1799 by French officer Pierre-François Bouchard during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt. It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslated hieroglyphic script. Lithographic copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums and scholars. When the British defeated the French they took the stone to London under the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801. Since 1802, it has been on public display at the British Museum almost continuously and is its most visited object.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Study of the decree was already underway when the first complete translation of the Greek text was published in 1803. Jean-François Champollion announced the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts in Paris in 1822; it took longer still before scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian inscriptions and literature confidently. Major advances in the decoding were recognition that the stone offered three versions of the same text (1799); that the Demotic text used phonetic characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the Demotic (1814); and that phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words (1822–1824).


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Three other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later, and several similar Egyptian bilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now known, including three slightly earlier Ptolemaic decrees: the Decree of Alexandria in 243 BC, the Decree of Canopus in 238 BC, and the Memphis decree of Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC. The Rosetta Stone is no longer unique, but it was the essential key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilisation. The term 'Rosetta Stone' is now used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The Rosetta Stone is listed as "a stone of black granodiorite, bearing three inscriptions ... found at Rosetta" in a contemporary catalogue of the artefacts discovered by the French expedition and surrendered to British troops in 1801. At some period after its arrival in London, the inscriptions were coloured in white chalk to make them more legible, and the remaining surface was covered with a layer of carnauba wax designed to protect it from visitors' fingers. This gave a dark colour to the stone that led to its mistaken identification as black basalt. These additions were removed when the stone was cleaned in 1999, revealing the original dark grey tint of the rock, the sparkle of its crystalline structure, and a pink vein running across the top left corner. Comparisons with the Klemm collection of Egyptian rock samples showed a close resemblance to rock from a small granodiorite quarry at Gebel Tingar on the west bank of the Nile, west of Elephantine in the region of Aswan; the pink vein is typical of granodiorite from this region.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The Rosetta Stone is high at its highest point, wide, and thick. It weighs approximately . It bears three inscriptions: the top register in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the second in the Egyptian Demotic script, and the third in Ancient Greek. The front surface is polished and the inscriptions lightly incised on it; the sides of the stone are smoothed, but the back is only roughly worked, presumably because it would have not been visible when the stele was erected.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stele. No additional fragments were found in later searches of the Rosetta site. Owing to its damaged state, none of the three texts is complete. The top register, composed of Egyptian hieroglyphs, suffered the most damage. Only the last 14 lines of the hieroglyphic text can be seen; all of them are broken on the right side, and 12 of them on the left. Below it, the middle register of demotic text has survived best; it has 32 lines, of which the first 14 are slightly damaged on the right side. The bottom register of Greek text contains 54 lines, of which the first 27 survive in full; the rest are increasingly fragmentary due to a diagonal break at the bottom right of the stone.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The stele was erected after the coronation of King Ptolemy V and was inscribed with a decree that established the divine cult of the new ruler. The decree was issued by a congress of priests who gathered at Memphis. The date is given as "4 Xandikos" in the Macedonian calendar and "18 Mekhir" in the Egyptian calendar, which corresponds to . The year is stated as the ninth year of Ptolemy V's reign (equated with 197/196 BC), which is confirmed by naming four priests who officiated in that year: Aetos son of Aetos was priest of the divine cults of Alexander the Great and the five Ptolemies down to Ptolemy V himself; the other three priests named in turn in the inscription are those who led the worship of Berenice Euergetis (wife of Ptolemy III), Arsinoe Philadelphos (wife and sister of Ptolemy II), and Arsinoe Philopator, mother of Ptolemy V. However, a second date is also given in the Greek and hieroglyphic texts, corresponding to , the official anniversary of Ptolemy's coronation. The demotic text conflicts with this, listing consecutive days in March for the decree and the anniversary. It is uncertain why this discrepancy exists, but it is clear that the decree was issued in 196 BC and that it was designed to re-establish the rule of the Ptolemaic kings over Egypt.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The decree was issued during a turbulent period in Egyptian history. Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the son of Ptolemy IV Philopator and his wife and sister Arsinoe, reigned from 204 to 181 BC. He had become ruler at the age of five after the sudden death of both of his parents, who were murdered in a conspiracy that involved Ptolemy IV's mistress Agathoclea, according to contemporary sources. The conspirators effectively ruled Egypt as Ptolemy V's guardians until a revolt broke out two years later under general Tlepolemus, when Agathoclea and her family were lynched by a mob in Alexandria. Tlepolemus, in turn, was replaced as guardian in 201 BC by Aristomenes of Alyzia, who was chief minister at the time of the Memphis decree.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Political forces beyond the borders of Egypt exacerbated the internal problems of the Ptolemaic kingdom. Antiochus III the Great and Philip V of Macedon had made a pact to divide Egypt's overseas possessions. Philip had seized several islands and cities in Caria and Thrace, while the Battle of Panium (198 BC) had resulted in the transfer of Coele-Syria, including Judaea, from the Ptolemies to the Seleucids. Meanwhile, in the south of Egypt, there was a long-standing revolt that had begun during the reign of Ptolemy IV, led by Horwennefer and by his successor Ankhwennefer. Both the war and the internal revolt were still ongoing when the young Ptolemy V was officially crowned at Memphis at the age of 12 (seven years after the start of his reign) and when, just over a year later, the Memphis decree was issued.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Stelae of this kind, which were established on the initiative of the temples rather than that of the king, are unique to Ptolemaic Egypt. In the preceding Pharaonic period it would have been unheard of for anyone but the divine rulers themselves to make national decisions: by contrast, this way of honoring a king was a feature of Greek cities. Rather than making his eulogy himself, the king had himself glorified and deified by his subjects or representative groups of his subjects. The decree records that Ptolemy V gave a gift of silver and grain to the temples. It also records that there was particularly high flooding of the Nile in the eighth year of his reign, and he had the excess waters dammed for the benefit of the farmers. In return the priesthood pledged that the king's birthday and coronation days would be celebrated annually and that all the priests of Egypt would serve him alongside the other gods. The decree concludes with the instruction that a copy was to be placed in every temple, inscribed in the "language of the gods" (Egyptian hieroglyphs), the "language of documents" (Demotic), and the "language of the Greeks" as used by the Ptolemaic government.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Securing the favour of the priesthood was essential for the Ptolemaic kings to retain effective rule over the populace. The High Priests of Memphis—where the king was crowned—were particularly important, as they were the highest religious authorities of the time and had influence throughout the kingdom. Given that the decree was issued at Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, rather than Alexandria, the centre of government of the ruling Ptolemies, it is evident that the young king was anxious to gain their active support. Thus, although the government of Egypt had been Greek-speaking ever since the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Memphis decree, like the three similar earlier decrees, included texts in Egyptian to show its connection to the general populace by way of the literate Egyptian priesthood.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: There can be no one definitive English translation of the decree, not only because modern understanding of the ancient languages continues to develop, but also because of the minor differences between the three original texts. Older translations by E. A. Wallis Budge (1904, 1913) and Edwyn R. Bevan (1927) are easily available but are now outdated, as can be seen by comparing them with the recent translation by R. S. Simpson, which is based on the demotic text and can be found online, or with the modern translations of all three texts, with introduction and facsimile drawing, that were published by Quirke and Andrews in 1989.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The stele was almost certainly not originally placed at Rashid (Rosetta) where it was found, but more likely came from a temple site farther inland, possibly the royal town of Sais. The temple from which it originally came was probably closed around AD 392 when Roman emperor Theodosius I ordered the closing of all non-Christian temples of worship. The original stele broke at some point, its largest piece becoming what we now know as the Rosetta Stone. Ancient Egyptian temples were later used as quarries for new construction, and the Rosetta Stone probably was re-used in this manner. Later it was incorporated in the foundations of a fortress constructed by the Mameluke Sultan Qaitbay (c. 1416/18–1496) to defend the Bolbitine branch of the Nile at Rashid. There it lay for at least another three centuries until its rediscovery.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Three other inscriptions relevant to the same Memphis decree have been found since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone: the Nubayrah Stele, a stele found in Elephantine and Noub Taha, and an inscription found at the Temple of Philae (on the Philae obelisk). Unlike the Rosetta Stone, the hieroglyphic texts of these inscriptions were relatively intact. The Rosetta Stone had been deciphered long before they were found, but later Egyptologists have used them to refine the reconstruction of the hieroglyphs that must have been used in the lost portions of the hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Napoleon's 1798 campaign in Egypt inspired a burst of Egyptomania in Europe, and especially France. A corps of 167 technical experts ("savants"), known as the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, accompanied the French expeditionary army to Egypt. On 1799, French soldiers under the command of Colonel d'Hautpoul were strengthening the defences of Fort Julien, a couple of miles north-east of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (modern-day Rashid). Lieutenant Pierre-François Bouchard spotted a slab with inscriptions on one side that the soldiers had uncovered. He and d'Hautpoul saw at once that it might be important and informed General Jacques-François Menou, who happened to be at Rosetta. The find was announced to Napoleon's newly founded scientific association in Cairo, the Institut d'Égypte, in a report by Commission member Michel Ange Lancret noting that it contained three inscriptions, the first in hieroglyphs and the third in Greek, and rightly suggesting that the three inscriptions were versions of the same text. Lancret's report, dated 1799, was read to a meeting of the Institute soon after . Bouchard, meanwhile, transported the stone to Cairo for examination by scholars. Napoleon himself inspected what had already begun to be called "la Pierre de Rosette", the Rosetta Stone, shortly before his return to France in August 1799.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The discovery was reported in September in "Courrier de l'Égypte", the official newspaper of the French expedition. The anonymous reporter expressed a hope that the stone might one day be the key to deciphering hieroglyphs. In 1800 three of the commission's technical experts devised ways to make copies of the texts on the stone. One of these experts was Jean-Joseph Marcel, a printer and gifted linguist, who is credited as the first to recognise that the middle text was written in the Egyptian demotic script, rarely used for stone inscriptions and seldom seen by scholars at that time, rather than Syriac as had originally been thought. It was artist and inventor Nicolas-Jacques Conté who found a way to use the stone itself as a printing block to reproduce the inscription. A slightly different method was adopted by Antoine Galland. The prints that resulted were taken to Paris by General Charles Dugua. Scholars in Europe were now able to see the inscriptions and attempt to read them.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: After Napoleon's departure, French troops held off British and Ottoman attacks for another 18 months. In March 1801, the British landed at Aboukir Bay. Menou was now in command of the French expedition. His troops, including the commission, marched north towards the Mediterranean coast to meet the enemy, transporting the stone along with many other antiquities. He was defeated in battle, and the remnant of his army retreated to Alexandria where they were surrounded and besieged, with the stone now inside the city. Menou surrendered on August 30.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: After the surrender, a dispute arose over the fate of the French archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt, including the artefacts, biological specimens, notes, plans, and drawings collected by the members of the commission. Menou refused to hand them over, claiming that they belonged to the institute. British General John Hely-Hutchinson refused to end the siege until Menou gave in. Scholars Edward Daniel Clarke and William Richard Hamilton, newly arrived from England, agreed to examine the collections in Alexandria and said they had found many artefacts that the French had not revealed. In a letter home, Clarke said that "we found much more in their possession than was represented or imagined".


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Hutchinson claimed that all materials were property of the British Crown, but French scholar Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire told Clarke and Hamilton that the French would rather burn all their discoveries than turn them over, referring ominously to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Clarke and Hamilton pleaded the French scholars' case to Hutchinson, who finally agreed that items such as natural history specimens would be considered the scholars' private property. Menou quickly claimed the stone, too, as his private property. Hutchinson was equally aware of the stone's unique value and rejected Menou's claim. Eventually an agreement was reached, and the transfer of the objects was incorporated into the Capitulation of Alexandria signed by representatives of the British, French, and Ottoman forces.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: It is not clear exactly how the stone was transferred into British hands, as contemporary accounts differ. Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, who was to escort it to England, claimed later that he had personally seized it from Menou and carried it away on a gun-carriage. In a much more detailed account, Edward Daniel Clarke stated that a French "officer and member of the Institute" had taken him, his student John Cripps, and Hamilton secretly into the back streets behind Menou's residence and revealed the stone hidden under protective carpets among Menou's baggage. According to Clarke, their informant feared that the stone might be stolen if French soldiers saw it. Hutchinson was informed at once and the stone was taken away—possibly by Turner and his gun-carriage.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Turner brought the stone to England aboard the captured French frigate HMS "Egyptienne", landing in Portsmouth in February 1802. His orders were to present it and the other antiquities to King George III. The King, represented by War Secretary Lord Hobart, directed that it should be placed in the British Museum. According to Turner's narrative, he and Hobart agreed that the stone should be presented to scholars at the Society of Antiquaries of London, of which Turner was a member, before its final deposit in the museum. It was first seen and discussed there at a meeting on 1802.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: In 1802, the Society created four plaster casts of the inscriptions, which were given to the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh and to Trinity College Dublin. Soon afterwards, prints of the inscriptions were made and circulated to European scholars. Before the end of 1802, the stone was transferred to the British Museum, where it is located today. New inscriptions painted in white on the left and right edges of the slab stated that it was "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801" and "Presented by King George III".


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The stone has been exhibited almost continuously in the British Museum since June 1802. During the middle of the 19th century, it was given the inventory number "EA 24", "EA" standing for "Egyptian Antiquities". It was part of a collection of ancient Egyptian monuments captured from the French expedition, including a sarcophagus of Nectanebo II (EA 10), the statue of a high priest of Amun (EA 81), and a large granite fist (EA 9). The objects were soon discovered to be too heavy for the floors of Montagu House (the original building of The British Museum), and they were transferred to a new extension that was added to the mansion. The Rosetta Stone was transferred to the sculpture gallery in 1834 shortly after Montagu House was demolished and replaced by the building that now houses the British Museum. According to the museum's records, the Rosetta Stone is its most-visited single object, a simple image of it was the museum's best selling postcard for several decades, and a wide variety of merchandise bearing the text from the Rosetta Stone (or replicating its distinctive shape) is sold in the museum shops.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The Rosetta Stone was originally displayed at a slight angle from the horizontal, and rested within a metal cradle that was made for it, which involved shaving off very small portions of its sides to ensure that the cradle fitted securely. It originally had no protective covering, and it was found necessary by 1847 to place it in a protective frame, despite the presence of attendants to ensure that it was not touched by visitors. Since 2004 the conserved stone has been on display in a specially built case in the centre of the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. A replica of the Rosetta Stone is now available in the King's Library of the British Museum, without a case and free to touch, as it would have appeared to early 19th-century visitors.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London towards the end of the First World War in 1917, and the Rosetta Stone was moved to safety, along with other portable objects of value. The stone spent the next two years below ground level in a station of the Postal Tube Railway at Mount Pleasant near Holborn. Other than during wartime, the Rosetta Stone has left the British Museum only once: for one month in October 1972, to be displayed alongside Champollion's "Lettre" at the Louvre in Paris on the 150th anniversary of the letter's publication. Even when the Rosetta Stone was undergoing conservation measures in 1999, the work was done in the gallery so that it could remain visible to the public.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual decipherment, the ancient Egyptian language and script had not been understood since shortly before the fall of the Roman Empire. The usage of the hieroglyphic script had become increasingly specialised even in the later Pharaonic period; by the 4th century AD, few Egyptians were capable of reading them. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased as temple priesthoods died out and Egypt was converted to Christianity; the last known inscription is dated to , found at Philae and known as the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom. The last demotic text, also from Philae, was written in 452.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Hieroglyphs retained their pictorial appearance, and classical authors emphasised this aspect, in sharp contrast to the Greek and Roman alphabets. In the 5th century, the priest Horapollo wrote "Hieroglyphica", an explanation of almost 200 glyphs. His work was believed to be authoritative, yet it was misleading in many ways, and this and other works were a lasting impediment to the understanding of Egyptian writing. Later attempts at decipherment were made by Arab historians in medieval Egypt during the 9th and 10th centuries. Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya were the first historians to study hieroglyphs, by comparing them to the contemporary Coptic language used by Coptic priests in their time. The study of hieroglyphs continued with fruitless attempts at decipherment by European scholars, notably Pierius Valerianus in the 16th century and Athanasius Kircher in the 17th. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 provided critical missing information, gradually revealed by a succession of scholars, that eventually allowed Jean-François Champollion to solve the puzzle that Kircher had called the riddle of the Sphinx.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The Greek text on the Rosetta Stone provided the starting point. Ancient Greek was widely known to scholars, but they were not familiar with details of its use in the Hellenistic period as a government language in Ptolemaic Egypt; large-scale discoveries of Greek papyri were a long way in the future. Thus, the earliest translations of the Greek text of the stone show the translators still struggling with the historical context and with administrative and religious jargon. Stephen Weston verbally presented an English translation of the Greek text at a Society of Antiquaries meeting in April 1802.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Meanwhile, two of the lithographic copies made in Egypt had reached the Institut de France in Paris in 1801. There, librarian and antiquarian Gabriel de La Porte du Theil set to work on a translation of the Greek, but he was dispatched elsewhere on Napoleon's orders almost immediately, and he left his unfinished work in the hands of colleague Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon. Ameilhon produced the first published translations of the Greek text in 1803, in both Latin and French to ensure that they would circulate widely. At Cambridge, Richard Porson worked on the missing lower right corner of the Greek text. He produced a skillful suggested reconstruction, which was soon being circulated by the Society of Antiquaries alongside its prints of the inscription. At almost the same moment, Christian Gottlob Heyne in Göttingen was making a new Latin translation of the Greek text that was more reliable than Ameilhon's and was first published in 1803. It was reprinted by the Society of Antiquaries in a special issue of its journal "Archaeologia" in 1811, alongside Weston's previously unpublished English translation, Colonel Turner's narrative, and other documents.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: At the time of the stone's discovery, Swedish diplomat and scholar Johan David Åkerblad was working on a little-known script of which some examples had recently been found in Egypt, which came to be known as Demotic. He called it "cursive Coptic" because he was convinced that it was used to record some form of the Coptic language (the direct descendant of Ancient Egyptian), although it had few similarities with the later Coptic script. French Orientalist Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy had been discussing this work with Åkerblad when, in 1801, he received one of the early lithographic prints of the Rosetta Stone, from Jean-Antoine Chaptal, French minister of the interior. He realised that the middle text was in this same script. He and Åkerblad set to work, both focusing on the middle text and assuming that the script was alphabetical. They attempted to identify the points where Greek names ought to occur within this unknown text, by comparing it with the Greek. In 1802, Silvestre de Sacy reported to Chaptal that he had successfully identified five names (""Alexandros"", ""Alexandreia"", ""Ptolemaios"", ""Arsinoe"", and Ptolemy's title ""Epiphanes""), while Åkerblad published an alphabet of 29 letters (more than half of which were correct) that he had identified from the Greek names in the Demotic text. They could not, however, identify the remaining characters in the Demotic text, which, as is now known, included ideographic and other symbols alongside the phonetic ones.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Silvestre de Sacy eventually gave up work on the stone, but he was to make another contribution. In 1811, prompted by discussions with a Chinese student about Chinese script, Silvestre de Sacy considered a suggestion made by Georg Zoëga in 1797 that the foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions might be written phonetically; he also recalled that as early as 1761, Jean-Jacques Barthélemy had suggested that the characters enclosed in cartouches in hieroglyphic inscriptions were proper names. Thus, when Thomas Young, foreign secretary of the Royal Society of London, wrote to him about the stone in 1814, Silvestre de Sacy suggested in reply that in attempting to read the hieroglyphic text, Young might look for cartouches that ought to contain Greek names and try to identify phonetic characters in them.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Young did so, with two results that together paved the way for the final decipherment. In the hieroglyphic text, he discovered the phonetic characters "" (in today's transliteration "") that were used to write the Greek name "". He also noticed that these characters resembled the equivalent ones in the demotic script, and went on to note as many as 80 similarities between the hieroglyphic and demotic texts on the stone, an important discovery because the two scripts were previously thought to be entirely different from one another. This led him to deduce correctly that the demotic script was only partly phonetic, also consisting of ideographic characters derived from hieroglyphs. Young's new insights were prominent in the long article "Egypt" that he contributed to the in 1819. He could make no further progress, however.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: In 1814, Young first exchanged correspondence about the stone with Jean-François Champollion, a teacher at Grenoble who had produced a scholarly work on ancient Egypt. Champollion saw copies of the brief hieroglyphic and Greek inscriptions of the Philae obelisk in 1822, on which William John Bankes had tentatively noted the names "" and "" in both languages. From this, Champollion identified the phonetic characters (in today's transliteration ). On the basis of this and the foreign names on the Rosetta Stone, he quickly constructed an alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphic characters, completing his work on 14 September and announcing it publicly on 27 September in a lecture to the . On the same day he wrote the famous "" to Bon-Joseph Dacier, secretary of the Académie, detailing his discovery. In the postscript Champollion notes that similar phonetic characters seemed to occur in both Greek and Egyptian names, a hypothesis confirmed in 1823, when he identified the names of pharaohs Ramesses and Thutmose written in cartouches at Abu Simbel. These far older hieroglyphic inscriptions had been copied by Bankes and sent to Champollion by Jean-Nicolas Huyot. From this point, the stories of the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs diverge, as Champollion drew on many other texts to develop an Ancient Egyptian grammar and a hieroglyphic dictionary which were published after his death in 1832.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Work on the stone now focused on fuller understanding of the texts and their contexts by comparing the three versions with one another. In 1824 Classical scholar Antoine-Jean Letronne promised to prepare a new literal translation of the Greek text for Champollion's use. Champollion in return promised an analysis of all the points at which the three texts seemed to differ. Following Champollion's sudden death in 1832, his draft of this analysis could not be found, and Letronne's work stalled. François Salvolini, Champollion's former student and assistant, died in 1838, and this analysis and other missing drafts were found among his papers. This discovery incidentally demonstrated that Salvolini's own publication on the stone, published in 1837, was plagiarism. Letronne was at last able to complete his commentary on the Greek text and his new French translation of it, which appeared in 1841. During the early 1850s, German Egyptologists Heinrich Brugsch and Max Uhlemann produced revised Latin translations based on the demotic and hieroglyphic texts. The first English translation followed in 1858, the work of three members of the Philomathean Society at the University of Pennsylvania.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Whether one of the three texts was the standard version, from which the other two were originally translated, is a question that has remained controversial. Letronne attempted to show in 1841 that the Greek version, the product of the Egyptian government under the Macedonian Ptolemies, was the original. Among recent authors, John Ray has stated that "the hieroglyphs were the most important of the scripts on the stone: they were there for the gods to read, and the more learned of their priesthood". Philippe Derchain and Heinz Josef Thissen have argued that all three versions were composed simultaneously, while Stephen Quirke sees in the decree "an intricate coalescence of three vital textual traditions". Richard Parkinson points out that the hieroglyphic version strays from archaic formalism and occasionally lapses into language closer to that of the demotic register that the priests more commonly used in everyday life. The fact that the three versions cannot be matched word for word helps to explain why the decipherment has been more difficult than originally expected, especially for those original scholars who were expecting an exact bilingual key to Egyptian hieroglyphs.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Even before the Salvolini affair, disputes over precedence and plagiarism punctuated the decipherment story. Thomas Young's work is acknowledged in Champollion's 1822 "Lettre à M. Dacier", but incompletely, according to early British critics: for example, James Browne, a sub-editor on the "Encyclopædia Britannica" (which had published Young's 1819 article), anonymously contributed a series of review articles to the "Edinburgh Review" in 1823, praising Young's work highly and alleging that the "unscrupulous" Champollion plagiarised it. These articles were translated into French by Julius Klaproth and published in book form in 1827. Young's own 1823 publication reasserted the contribution that he had made. The early deaths of Young (1829) and Champollion (1832) did not put an end to these disputes. In his work on the stone in 1904 E. A. Wallis Budge gave special emphasis to Young's contribution compared with Champollion's. In the early 1970s, French visitors complained that the portrait of Champollion was smaller than one of Young on an adjacent information panel; English visitors complained that the opposite was true. The portraits were in fact the same size.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Calls for the Rosetta Stone to be returned to Egypt were made in July 2003 by Zahi Hawass, then Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. These calls, expressed in the Egyptian and international media, asked that the stele be repatriated to Egypt, commenting that it was the "icon of our Egyptian identity". He repeated the proposal two years later in Paris, listing the stone as one of several key items belonging to Egypt's cultural heritage, a list which also included: the iconic bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin; a statue of the Great Pyramid architect Hemiunu in the Roemer-und-Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim, Germany; the Dendera Temple Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris; and the bust of Ankhhaf in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In August 2022, Zahi Hawass reiterated his previous demands.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: In 2005, the British Museum presented Egypt with a full-sized fibreglass colour-matched replica of the stele. This was initially displayed in the renovated Rashid National Museum, an Ottoman house in the town of Rashid (Rosetta), the closest city to the site where the stone was found. In November 2005, Hawass suggested a three-month loan of the Rosetta Stone, while reiterating the eventual goal of a permanent return. In December 2009, he proposed to drop his claim for the permanent return of the Rosetta Stone if the British Museum lent the stone to Egypt for three months for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza in 2013.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: As John Ray has observed: "The day may come when the stone has spent longer in the British Museum than it ever did in Rosetta."


title: Rosetta Stone

text: National museums typically express strong opposition to the repatriation of objects of international cultural significance such as the Rosetta Stone. In response to repeated Greek requests for return of the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon and similar requests to other museums around the world, in 2002, over 30 of the world's leading museums—including the British Museum, the Louvre, the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City—issued a joint statement:


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Various ancient bilingual or even trilingual epigraphical documents have sometimes been described as "Rosetta stones", as they permitted the decipherment of ancient written scripts. For example, the bilingual Greek-Brahmi coins of the Greco-Bactrian king Agathocles have been described as "little Rosetta stones", allowing Christian Lassen's initial progress towards deciphering the Brahmi script, thus unlocking ancient Indian epigraphy. The Behistun inscription has also been compared to the Rosetta stone, as it links the translations of three ancient Middle-Eastern languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The term "Rosetta stone" has been also used idiomatically to denote the first crucial key in the process of decryption of encoded information, especially when a small but representative sample is recognised as the clue to understanding a larger whole. According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", the first figurative use of the term appeared in the 1902 edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" relating to an entry on the chemical analysis of glucose. Another use of the phrase is found in H. G. Wells's 1933 novel "The Shape of Things to Come", where the protagonist finds a manuscript written in shorthand that provides a key to understanding additional scattered material that is sketched out in both longhand and on typewriter.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Since then, the term has been widely used in other contexts. For example, Nobel laureate Theodor W. Hänsch in a 1979 "Scientific American" article on spectroscopy wrote that "the spectrum of the hydrogen atoms has proven to be the Rosetta Stone of modern physics: once this pattern of lines had been deciphered much else could also be understood". Fully understanding the key set of genes to the human leucocyte antigen has been described as "the Rosetta Stone of immunology". The flowering plant "Arabidopsis thaliana" has been called the "Rosetta Stone of flowering time". A gamma-ray burst (GRB) found in conjunction with a supernova has been called a Rosetta Stone for understanding the origin of GRBs. The technique of Doppler echocardiography has been called a Rosetta Stone for clinicians trying to understand the complex process by which the left ventricle of the human heart can be filled during various forms of diastolic dysfunction.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Other non-linguistic uses of "Rosetta" to name software include the European Space Agency's "Rosetta" spacecraft, launched to study the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in the hope that determining its composition will advance understanding of the origins of the Solar System. One program, billed as a "lightweight dynamic translator" that enables applications compiled for PowerPC processors to run on x86 processor Apple Inc. systems, is named "Rosetta" (then in 2020, Rosetta 2, bundled with MacOS, did the same for running x86 programs on the new Apple processors). The Rosetta@home endeavor is a distributed computing project for predicting protein structures from amino acid sequences (i.e. "translating" sequence into structure).


title: Rosetta Stone

text: The name is used for various forms of translation software. "Rosetta Stone" is a brand of language-learning software published by Rosetta Stone Inc., who are headquartered in Arlington County, US. And "Rosetta", developed and maintained by Canonical (the Ubuntu Linux company) as part of the Launchpad project, is an online language translation tool to help with localisation of software.


title: Rosetta Stone

text: Most comprehensively, the Rosetta Project brings language specialists and native speakers together to develop a meaningful survey and near-permanent archive of 1,500 languages, in physical and digital form, with the intent of it remaining useful from AD 2000 to 12,000.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 by both sides. Iraq's primary rationale for the attack against Iran cited the need to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini—who had spearheaded Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979—from exporting the new Iranian ideology to Iraq; there were also fears among the Iraqi leadership of Saddam Hussein that Iran, a theocratic state with a population predominantly composed of Shia Muslims, would exploit sectarian tensions in Iraq by rallying Iraq's Shia majority against the Baʽathist government, which was officially secular and dominated by Sunni Muslims. Iraq also wished to replace Iran as the power player in the Persian Gulf, which was not seen as an achievable objective prior to the Islamic Revolution as Pahlavi Iran boasted colossal economic and military strength as well as close relationships with the United States and Israel.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: The Iran–Iraq War followed a long-running history of territorial border disputes between the two states, as a result of which Iraq planned to retake the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab that it had ceded to Iran in the 1975 Algiers Agreement. Iraqi support for Arab separatists in Iran increased following the outbreak of hostilities; while claims arose suspecting that Iraq was seeking to annex Iran's Khuzestan Province, Saddam Hussein publicly stated in November 1980 that Iraq was not seeking an annexation of any Iranian territory. It is believed that Iraq had sought to establish suzerainty over Khuzestan. While the Iraqi leadership had hoped to take advantage of Iran's post-revolutionary chaos and expected a decisive victory in the face of a severely weakened Iran, the Iraqi military only made progress for three months, and by December 1980, the Iraqi invasion had stalled. As fierce fighting broke out between the two sides, the Iranian military began to gain momentum against the Iraqis and regained virtually all lost territory by June 1982. After pushing Iraqi forces back to the pre-war border lines, Iran rejected United Nations Security Council Resolution 514 and launched an invasion of Iraq. The subsequent Iranian offensive within Iraqi territory lasted for five years, with Iraq taking back the initiative in mid-1988 and subsequently launching a series of major counter-offensives that ultimately led to the conclusion of the war in a stalemate.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: The eight years of war-exhaustion, economic devastation, decreased morale, military stalemate, inaction by the international community towards the use of weapons of mass destruction by Iraqi forces on Iranian soldiers and civilians, as well as increasing Iran–United States military tensions all culminated in Iran's acceptance of a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations Security Council. In total, around 500,000 people were killed during the Iran–Iraq War (with Iran bearing the larger share of the casualties), excluding the tens of thousands of civilians killed in the concurrent Anfal campaign that targeted Iraqi Kurds. The end of the conflict resulted in neither reparations nor border changes, and the combined financial losses suffered by both combatants is believed to have exceeded . There were a number of proxy forces operating for both countries: Iraq and the pro-Iraqi Arab separatist militias in Iran were most notably supported by the National Council of Resistance of Iran; whereas Iran re-established an alliance with the Iraqi Kurds, being primarily supported by the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. During the conflict, Iraq received an abundance of financial, political, and logistical aid from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, and the overwhelming majority of Arab countries. While Iran was comparatively isolated to a large degree, it received a significant amount of aid from Syria, Libya, China, North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, and South Yemen.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: The conflict has been compared to World War I in terms of the tactics used by both sides, including large-scale trench warfare with barbed wire stretched across fortified defensive lines, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, Iranian human wave attacks, Iraq's extensive use of chemical weapons, and deliberate attacks on civilian targets. A notable feature of the war was the state-sanctioned glorification of martyrdom among Iranian children; the discourses on martyrdom formulated in the Iranian Shia Islamic context led to the widespread usage of human wave attacks and thus had a lasting impact on the dynamics of the conflict.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: The war is known in the Arab world and a few other regions as the "First Gulf War" (), whereas Western sources use that name to refer to the conflict between the American-led coalition and Iraq in 1991. The Iran–Iraq War was originally referred to as the "Persian Gulf War" until the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War of 1990 and 1991, after which the previous war was dubbed the "First Persian Gulf War". However besides the Iran-Iraq war, the 1990 Iraq–Kuwait conflict, as well as The Iraq War from 2003 to 2011 have all been called the "Second Persian Gulf War". In Iran, the war is known as the "Imposed War" ( ') and the "Holy Defense" ( '). State media in Iraq dubbed the war "Saddam's Qadisiyyah" (, ""), in reference to the seventh-century Battle of al-Qādisiyyah, in which Arab warriors overcame the Sasanian Empire during the Muslim conquest of Iran.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: In April 1969, Iran abrogated the 1937 treaty over the Shatt al-Arab and Iranian ships stopped paying tolls to Iraq when they used the Shatt al-Arab. The Shah argued that the 1937 treaty was unfair to Iran because almost all river borders around the world ran along the "thalweg", and because most of the ships that used the Shatt al-Arab were Iranian. Iraq threatened war over the Iranian move, but on 24 April 1969, an Iranian tanker escorted by Iranian warships (Joint Operation Arvand) sailed down the Shatt al-Arab, and Iraq—being the militarily weaker state—did nothing. The Iranian abrogation of the 1937 treaty marked the beginning of a period of acute Iraqi-Iranian tension that was to last until the Algiers Agreement of 1975.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: The relationship between the governments of Iran and Iraq briefly improved in 1978, when Iranian agents in Iraq discovered plans for a pro-Soviet "coup d'état" against Iraq's government. When informed of this plot, Saddam ordered the execution of dozens of his army's officers, and in a sign of reconciliation, expelled from Iraq Ruhollah Khomeini, an exiled leader of clerical opposition to the Shah. Nonetheless, Saddam considered the 1975 Algiers Agreement to be merely a truce, rather than a definite settlement, and waited for an opportunity to contest it.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: Tensions between Iraq and Iran were fuelled by Iran's Islamic revolution and its appearance of being a Pan-Islamic force, in contrast to Iraq's Arab nationalism. Despite Iraq's goal of regaining the Shatt al-Arab, the Iraqi government initially seemed to welcome the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was seen as a common enemy. There were frequent clashes along the Iran–Iraq border throughout 1980, with Iraq publicly complaining of at least 544 incidents and Iran citing at least 797 violations of its border and airspace.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Iraqis to overthrow the Ba'ath government, which was received with considerable anger in Baghdad. On 17 July 1979, despite Khomeini's call, Saddam gave a speech praising the Iranian Revolution and called for an Iraqi-Iranian friendship based on non-interference in each other's internal affairs. When Khomeini rejected Saddam's overture by calling for Islamic revolution in Iraq, Saddam was alarmed. Iran's new Islamic administration was regarded in Baghdad as an irrational, existential threat to the Ba'ath government, especially because the Ba'ath party, having a secular nature, discriminated against and posed a threat to the fundamentalist Shia movement in Iraq, whose clerics were Iran's allies within Iraq and whom Khomeini saw as oppressed.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: Saddam's primary interest in war may have also stemmed from his desire to right the supposed "wrong" of the Algiers Agreement, in addition to finally achieving his desire of becoming the regional superpower. Saddam's goal was to supplant Egypt as the "leader of the Arab world" and to achieve hegemony over the Persian Gulf. He saw Iran's increased weakness due to revolution, sanctions, and international isolation. Saddam had invested heavily in Iraq's military since his defeat against Iran in 1975, buying large amounts of weaponry from the Soviet Union and France. Between 1973 and 1980 alone, Iraq purchased an estimated 1,600 tanks and APCs and over 200 Soviet-made aircraft. By 1980, Iraq possessed 242,000 soldiers (second only to Egypt in the Arab world), 2,350 tanks and 340 combat aircraft. Watching the disintegration of the powerful Iranian army that frustrated him in 1974–1975, he saw an opportunity to attack, using the threat of Islamic Revolution as a pretext. Iraqi military intelligence reported in July 1980 that despite Iran's bellicose rhetoric, "it is clear that, at present, Iran has no power to launch wide offensive operations against Iraq, or to defend on a large scale." Days before the Iraqi invasion and in the midst of rapidly escalating cross-border skirmishes, Iraqi military intelligence again reiterated on 14 September that "the enemy deployment organization does not indicate hostile intentions and appears to be taking on a more defensive mode."


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: Some scholars writing prior to the opening of formerly classified Iraqi archives, such as Alistair Finlan, argued that Saddam was drawn into a conflict with Iran due to the border clashes and Iranian meddling in Iraqi domestic affairs. Finlan stated in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion was meant to be a limited operation in order to send a political message to the Iranians to keep out of Iraqi domestic affairs, whereas Kevin M. Woods and Williamson Murray stated in 2014 that the balance of evidence suggests Saddam was seeking "a convenient excuse for war" in 1980.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: On 8 March 1980, Iran announced it was withdrawing its ambassador from Iraq, downgraded its diplomatic ties to the charge d'affaires level, and demanded that Iraq do the same. The following day, Iraq declared Iran's ambassador persona non-grata, and demanded his withdrawal from Iraq by 15 March.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: In Iran, severe officer purges (including numerous executions ordered by Sadegh Khalkhali, the new Revolutionary Court judge), and shortages of spare parts for Iran's American and British-made equipment had crippled Iran's once-mighty military. Between February and September 1979, Iran's government executed 85 senior generals and forced all major-generals and most brigadier-generals into early retirement.


title: Iran–Iraq War

text: By September 1980, the revolutionary government had purged some 12,000 officers of all levels from the army. These purges resulted in a drastic decline in the Iranian military's operational capacities.