The Secrets of the Rosetta Stone with Joel Freeman

0:00 Hello and welcome to the Strang Report. I'm Stephen Strang. Thank you for watching. Thank you for subscribing. If you don't already subscribe, hit that subscribe, hit the little bell that lets you know when we're on every Tuesday and Thursday at 4pm. And also share this with other people. That's how it continues to grow. Our podcast is growing and growing. And if you've watched me for very long and many of you do, you know that I talk about things that are interesting to me personally and in my line of work for many, many years as a Christian journalist. And before that, a secular journalist. I've learned to recognize a good story. And recently I was at the National Religious Broadcasters and I met a man named Joel Freeman whose life work has to do with the Rosetta Stone. And I've been interested in the Rosetta Stone for years. In fact, a number of years ago on vacation in England, I went to the British Museum and saw the original. And I've just always been interested in that, interested in language, interested in problem solving, which we're going to talk about today.

1:21 So even if you're not interested in history, like I am, if you have a need for problem solving, if you have a need to sharpen your brain, this is a podcast that you want to stay tuned. So I want you to subscribe and also leave comments. And we want this to be as interactive a learning experience. So let me start by welcoming Dr. Freeman and thank you for fitting in. It was, we had a little bit of a challenge to find a time that was mutually convenient. But here we are. And let's start by you explaining. We have so many things we can talk about and we're just going to have a conversation. But how did you get involved? Or how did you get interested in the Rosetta Stone almost 50 years ago? You don't look that old.

2:11 Yes, I'll be 70 in a few months. And I'm originally from Alberta, Canada. I left home when I was 17. I became a long-haired hippie in a dope-smoking fool hitchhiking all around North America. I had a conversion experience in 1972, September 10th. That evening, I accepted Jesus as my personal savior. And I signed up for Bible school the very next day. And what happened is I just, about a year later, I began to see hypocrisy in others and more profoundly hypocrisy in my own self. And so that forced me to start studying, because every bone and tissue in my body want to get back out on the road and just start hitchhiking again. But I thought, you know, there's something about this that I think is real. So I began to do a lot of research into the reliability of Scripture, science and mathematics. And I made phone calls to people that had written books. Norman Geisler became a personal friend and all kinds of different individuals began to travel too later on. But I've hiked throughout the Kumeran caves, the Dead Sea Scrolls. I've been to where the Rosetta Stone was on earth in 1799. And so part of my journey is I was looking at the spate of archaeology, the internal external evidences of Scripture. And then, you know, the spate of archaeology was fascinating.

3:43 Every time I seemed to bump into the Rosetta Stone. And I thought, wow, this is interesting. So what happened is I never dreamed I'd ever become, you know, where we are today with dealing with Rosetta Stone as the only one who's developed a full site. You've developed a whole program. You even have a foundation. You've got celebrities like Smokey Robinson working with you. I've just, when I met you at NRB, I was just fascinated with this. You have a whole brochure that you tell about the story. But anyway, get back to your story. So what happened is I began as I started studying about the Rosetta Stone, I began to realize that this was a very important piece. And let me take a little quick sidebar for about 60 seconds. The History Channel did a show about 10 years ago called 101 Objects That Changed the World. And they assembled what they call SMEs, subject matter experts on various disciplines.

4:48 And you know that number one object that changed the world was the Bible. That's what they came up with. Number two was coinage, money. And number three, now think about it, you got the computer, you have the wheel, the Rosetta Stone was number three. And that completely, that gave me a mental whiplash. I just thought, wow, how could they do that? How could they say that? So that even spurred me on more and more to want to research and understand. And of course, the Rosetta Stone, we have the Rosetta Genome Project. The European Space Agency had the Rosetta Project where they were checking out comets. We have all kinds of folks, you know, they could say this is the Rosetta Stone of EVs or electronic electric vehicles. This is the Rosetta Stone of whatever, you feel in the blanks. And so it becomes almost a metaphor for other, exactly like someone I read this week that somebody was a man who I actually knew was the mother Teresa of Orlando. You know, I guess it's the same kind of thing because everybody understands, you don't even have to go to college to at least know there is a Rosetta Stone. You might not know it was found in 1799 on the banks of the Nile, but everybody knows it. In fact, isn't there a company that teaches language or something?

6:08 Exactly. That used the name Rosetta Stone because I guess it's so tied in to language. Yes. And so I was able to acquire in about, I'd say probably 2005, there was a gentleman who was a foreign journalist. He lived in Vermont, but he was in London. And he somehow in the seventies was able to acquire a face, a first generation reproduction of the face of the Rosetta Stone. So I found out about it. He was moving to Florida, you know, and he was getting rid of stuff. I paid a King's ransom for it, but I bought it. And when it arrived, I thought, gosh, what if I found a stone sculptor? Because I've been over to London many times. I stayed with a friend in Lamb's Conduit Court about a five minute walk. I was over there at the British Museum all the time. That's back when you could touch it. You could lick it. You could hug it. You could do whatever you want. And it was right there.

7:05 And so what happened is I just, I found a stone sculptor in Battle Creek, Michigan. And he was able to, and I took a lot of pictures back in the day. So we had pictures from the side, the rear, the top, the bottom, the front, everything. So he, after five permutations, he came up with the most delightful, most incredible, exquisite reproduction, you know, for a mold. We made a mold. And then I became the first person and the only person in the world to create a full size 3D replica there in museums in South Korea, Australia, Czech Republic, the Houston Museum of Natural History as one of my replicas are in private collections.

7:46 Because there's only one in the British Museum. That's right. There's a lot of people who would like to actually see it. And of course they know it's a replica. Yes. But that's interesting. But they got the real thing. Also, didn't I see in your brochure that it's in some movies too? Yeah, it was in the movie Night at the Museum, part three. That was one of the last movies of Robin Williams. And I remember when 20th Century Fox person called me, I thought it was one of my friends playing a practical joke on me. I said, no, no, this can't be real. But they ended up leasing it for six weeks. It was on the movie set in Vancouver. And you have to look real hard. I can see it about three times where this camera pans past it. But it's just been a fascinating journey. And so what I'm doing now, Stephen, is I look around and I see we got AI. We have chat GPT. We have Siri, Alexa. I'm not an anti-technology person at all. But I do think that in the wrong hands, it can get dystopian rather quickly. But I also am thinking about just like muscles atrophy. I think the Cleveland Clinic says that it takes about two to three weeks and muscles will atrophy without resistance.

9:04 In the same way, I believe that a whole generation is being raised where they are just having things coming very quickly to them. And plus it can, you know, back in the day, you and I come from a generation where you had to actually read a book. If you had an idea, you know, and then you had the completion, you're going along and you're going all over the place trying to figure things out and then get to the point. We used to have to add in our heads. I worked at a fast food restaurant and at the counter, we had to write it down and add it up, collect the money and put it in the cash register. We didn't even have a cash register that added things up. Now nobody adds in their head anymore.

9:49 Right. They have the picture of the item on the keypad. You know, that's a hamburger. Okay. That's right. And so I see a whole generation growing up where you input something in chat GPT and within millisecond, you've got a poem, a chapter for a book, you've got a song, lyrics, whatever it might be. And what I fear and my concern is that people will develop what we call the poser mentality, the imposter syndrome, where someone says, I wrote that book. No, no, no, you didn't. Chat GP did. Chat GPT did. And I think that it has done something to the character of a person. You know, when you have to struggle, that builds patience, it builds character, it builds kindness, it builds perseverance. And I'm just concerned about a generation. So using the Rosetta Stone as a metaphor, changing, transforming this ancient artifact into a modern metaphor for problem solving, telling the story of 23 years from 1799 to 1822, it took that long period of time. And you had people from Sweden, from England, from Germany, from Italy, from France, from all over the place. It was like an international treasure hunt to see who was going to be able to finally do this.

11:10 Well, let's talk about it because the Rosetta Stone wrote something in three different languages. And one of them was Greek. And one of them was Egyptian hieroglyphics. And I forget the other one, but kind of explain it and what the significance was when they finally cracked the code. Yes. It's actually two languages, it's three inscriptions. The Greek was here and why was it there was because you had Alexander the Great and conquered Egypt prior to this. And then you had the Demotic script comes from the Greek word demis, we get the word democracy from it. And so the common people use this, it's like a cursive form of hieroglyphics.

11:54 In hieroglyphics, see that the stone should have been about this high in all, it was broken off here, there's a natural vein that caused to be broken off. So they had only 14 lines, there's 28 lines in all 14 lines of hieroglyphics. And they didn't know if it was alphabetic, is it phonetic, do you read left to right, right to left, is it symbolic, they didn't know no computer algorithms, no previous experience. And that's where the the rub came in. And that's where people began to really fake try to figure this out. And so some people like Thomas Young came up with some clues, a general by name of Ackerblad from Sweden came up with some clues. Back back to the ninth century, there's a man from Iraq, who codified a lot of his insights. And because member pilgrims people are coming to Egypt all the time, they're gazing looking around going, What is this? Did they let loose a kindergarten class in the community and to make all these eyes and snakes and everything else. They didn't know there's an esoteric language, hieroglyphics literally means the Greek priestly carving. So is a small like a tree, where you cut off a tree and then you have the rings, as you get closer to the core, the heart of the tree trunk, then then they these are the people that knew what it meant. But as you get a got away from the center, then the common people didn't know. So this was a proclamation. What had happened is the priests and I copolis, like copolis, they rebelled against temple taxes. That's what's written on the Rosetta stone. And so the soldiers came in, excuse me, because tallamy the fourth, the

13:28 fifth, he was young kid 14, 15 years of age, his dad died. And he was trusted to power, he had a lot of adults around him. The soldiers came in, they cut off the Nile, the priests came out with their hands up and said, we give up. And they said, Okay, we will forgive your temple tax. If you will deify, make tallamy the fifth, the grand Puba of is of Egypt. And that's basically what it says. But the key is that the Greek for the first time, they knew what it said. And that's what set apart all the others, Kierke from Germany, Doega, a Danish priest, all these folks that were wrestling with the Rosetta stone with the hieroglyphics and couldn't couldn't crack the code. Now this was the key that caused the code to be cracked. Okay. And once it was cracked, what's the significance of that?

14:19 Well, it literally Stephen, it unlocked the secrets of ancient Egypt. Now they could say, Oh, women worked. And here's receipts that they were paid for their work. And and and then they were able to say, Oh, that battle happened, or that family system lived. And this King reigned. This is the capitals move from Thebes to Memphis or whatever it was happening. And they were able to unlock the secrets. And that's what has made Egypt such ancient Egypt such an enigmatic and mysterious, secretive type of a place. And people are always intrigued and fascinated. So what I've done is I've taken the word Rosetta. And I've developed seven steps to solve pretty much any problem in one's life. And just finished a book on it that'll be out probably in about some some time. And maybe by the time people see this, they'll start hearing about it. But it's, it's a book where I take these seven steps. But I tell the story of the cracking of the code and the subsequent revelations that came out of the understanding of hieroglyphics to show how how ones how anyone could take a particular problem because we have moral ethical problems. We have technical problems, organizational development problems, change management. There's like 15 categories of problems.

15:38 And it's important for a person, anyone watching this to realize that I've developed a whole process. If your problem is a campfire, enjoy it. It's probably just part of life. And don't marshal the forces against it and try to figure things out. Just enjoy it. It's just the way it is. If your problem develops into a bonfire, then you better begin to take a look at things and figure things out. If it's if there's a lot of pain coming from it, if it's disturbing your relationships with other people, it's impacting your bottom line financially, you better take a closer look at it. But if it develops into a wildfire, you better push everything out of the way and really focus on developing an inventory so people can determine the campfire, bonfire, wildfire situation, and then they can implement that first of all, a person that are stands for recognize a person. We can't help anybody. We can't help ourselves if we don't recognize there's a problem or some kind of obstacle that is coming in our way. And you know, some of the greatest ideas have come from a person hearing someone else complain about something. Quick story. A woman who has trained in her went to college to become a financial analyst and a helper with a CPA. She was working in Philadelphia with some of the members of the Philadelphia Phillies and a pitcher. I can't remember his name, but he came in for his quarterly session with her. And they start talking about their dogs.

17:09 And he mentioned, yeah, I hate my dog is pooping all over the backyard. That's the biggest terrible worst part of having an animal with all the stuff in the backyard. And she said, well, would you ever have want to have someone come and clean that up? He's, oh, yes, I'd pay him big money. Well, the next quarterly meeting, she asked more about it. And she says, I'd like to be that person. She ended up after three years doing a million dollars a year with nine employees picking up dog poop in people's backyards. My point is, here's someone's problem complaining about it. And she recognized the problem. She obtained information. That's the O obtained information, specify goals.

17:52 What do I with the S R O S to specify goals? Do I want to become rich? Do I want to become famous? I think those two are very shallow reasons for solving problems. But it drives some people. I think it's much more, it would begin to determine our why we can bear under any who, where, when, how, what, all that other stuff that comes at us if we know our why. And as believers in Jesus Christ, we know that we're strangers here. But we also know that we're to occupy till he comes. And we've been given talents and we cannot bury those. We must not bury those talents. And so when we start looking, for instance, real quick, this right here is our solution to the education gap in America. It's a curriculum. There's now an over 360 school systems around the country. Well, we as Christians complain and moan about what's happening in our education system.

18:50 We're in Florida. We're in Seattle, you know, all these different things. It's a solution to the education gap in America called Black History 365 K through 12. And that's the kind of stuff that motivates me is to look for a problem and then see how we can help to solve it. So it's our recognize, obtain information, as specify your goals, understand the why, and then evaluate options. Just like with the Rosetta Stone, you have a one guy became kind of the center of this whole thing. His name is Jean Francois Champollion from Fissiak, France. He was in Paris as a young kid. He knew about nine languages at 16 years of age. He was fascinated. His dad had a rare document and rare book business. Did you say nine languages? Yes. How can somebody's brain remember nine languages?

19:43 Unbelievable. Latin, Hebrew, Greek. I mean, just when you see the list of languages this young man knew. And then of course, during the Napoleonic competition military campaign, when they found this trilingual rock, this became a world famous rock, he heard about it and he thought he had this inspiration. I want to be the one who cracks the code. And so as people began to come up with ideas, he became like the repository of information from Thomas Young and others from around the world. And he began to put these clues together. So he evaluated the options. And that's what's so important because when especially like if someone's going to find a cure for cancer, or a SIDS, or some other disease, or find some cure for parking in urban areas, whatever it might be, you have to understand what the options are and sometimes just take the best of the worst and then just get moving, get started with that option. And that's where it tests, you know, R-O-S-E-T, tests the solutions because you might have one or two solutions and then just say, I'm going to start testing them and to develop strategies for figuring out what works, what doesn't work, and then take action. And that's what a lot of people do depending on one's personality. Some are very analytical.

20:59 They want to get the best computer system, put everything in their office and they spend six months trying to put everything together, but they never seem to get off the dime and make things moving. There are other people moving before they've done the analytical work. And so it's important to realize what the strengths and vulnerabilities are in the way that we're wired and then bring people around us because when we're in a jar, you can't read the label, bring other people that are smarter than us around us, they'll help read the label for us so that we can then build a team of people. It takes a visionary many times to come up with ideas and then the team of people that can help keep that kite from flying off and keep it grounded. And then finally, assess. So R-O, recognize, obtain information, specify goals, evaluate options, test solutions, take action, and then assess results. We cannot manage what we don't measure. And so that's a double negative, but we must measure and then we can manage it.

21:55 And so these are the kinds of things that I hope to inspire a whole generation, developing a 5,000 square foot travel exhibit. Once there's four zones, the history is number one, the cracking of codes, the enigma machine, all that kind of stuff, cracking codes, number three will be language and culture, number four will be taking the Rosetta process and then picking 25 to 30 of the most incredible G-Wiz jaw-dropping technology and showing the iterative process through those seven steps. And then like an NCIS, give someone a smack on the back of the head, go create. And then once the template is done, we're then going to create two for China, one for Southeast Asia, one for Europe, and then one that will travel around to other cities that aren't serviced by the other orbits like Sydney, Tel Aviv, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow. And then once they're all done, they're seven years, five months, five months at each venue, and traveling all around refurbished between each venue, it will then be donated to a different part of the world.

23:01 I'm in Barbados at this moment and Barbados is going to get the first one. It's going to become a static museum. And then what will happen is it'll help with tourism, also provide jobs, and then there'll be a problem-solving institute next to each one. And we're going to have all the people in, for instance, Barbados identify friends and relatives that are part of the Bayesian diaspora throughout the world, civil engineers, soccer moms, clergy, whoever it might be, they're going to identify, they are going to identify the top 25 problems of this region of the world, tell the government to stand down unless we need you for zoning purposes or whatever. And then they're going to go about have a citizen-led problem-solving institute taking those seven steps to solve problems in that region of the world. Boy, that is so interesting and exciting, and I love your enthusiasm. You're very invested in this, of course, and so creative. And I want to connect people with you. My whole career, I've kind of been a connector, and this is one more way I can connect. So how can people find out more about what you're doing to Rosetta Stone and about your foundation? Stephen, first of all, thank you so much for this opportunity.

24:19 Someone goes to Rosetta Crazy, so it's r-o-s-e-t-t-a-crazy.com. And that will take them to, we have, for instance, Ben Carson's on our advisory board. They'll see Smokey Robinson, Kathy Hughes, and many others. And Ellie Chacrone, who's one of the chief archaeologists in the city of David for 20 years and many other notable people. James Hurrell, by the way, is the world leading authority on geological archaeology. He has identified 110 mines and quarries where you look at a temple and you say, where'd that stone come from? He can tell you exactly. In fact, he knows exactly which quarry there was at a stone, only one called the Aswan quarry. And so they could go there and learn all about the project. And there's, I guess the action point, you'll see my cell number, give me a call. And I'd be very happy to talk with you. Well, you know, I've been waiting to tell a personal story because this is about you, not me. But in 1979, with a few other men, we went to the Sinai Peninsula. And while we were on our way to Mount Sinai, we stopped at a mountain that had Solomon's mines in the name of it. And I hope I don't murder the pronunciation with Sarah Beat El Khadim. And we actually went into the cave. It was almost like riding on cave walls, kind of like cavemen, only it wasn't that far back. And they called it proto-Sinaiatic writing. And they explained to us, you know, we were there kind of as religious tourists. Someone

25:52 explained that it was kind of a bridge between hieroglyphics, which in Egypt, it was like kind of a different picture, like a person or different things that meant different things. It was kind of a transition to Hebrew and an alphabet of some kind. And there were two inscriptions. And one of them was about commerce. So and so had sold something to someone. And the other was the words, God is eternal. And we just found that very interesting. And all these years later, I'm reflecting on it. And I remember that they showed that something that looked like waves.

26:32 And they said that that was the word for water, maybe was meme or something like that. And that kind of morphed into our M. And they were just explaining. And it was like, it was to me, it was kind of like a ha ha moment. This is kind of how the the language developed. So you can see that all the way back, I was interested in that I've not had an opportunity to travel like you. And I'm not an archaeologist, of course, but it's why I'm so interested in the Rosetta Stone. And I hope people will connect with you. I hope people will share this with others, especially if you know people that are interested in problem solving and interested in history and archaeology and language. And so as we wrap up with just a few seconds left, I want to give you the last word.

27:19 Well, I hope that people will embrace problems. And, you know, it's like when you're in business, and someone comes through the problem, if it's appropriate, give them a hug and say, you are my job security. Thank you so much. You came to the right spot because I'm a problem solver. And I think if we can ignite that kind of excitement and enthusiasm about problems, like Rick Warren says, you're either coming toward a problem, you're in a problem, or you're coming out of a problem. It's part of this life. And we are all creation is groaning for the day when we won't have that. But we're here, let's occupy and let's enjoy the best we can with a great sense of humor with what we have in what we're dealing with in our everyday lives. Well, thank you, Joel Freeman, for being my guest on the Strang Report. Thank you to my viewers and listeners for tuning in, tuning in every Tuesday and Thursday at 4pm Eastern time for the Strang Report podcast.

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