The Freschetta Stone

So, for our civilization project over in the Greece Group, we got together and discussed how we wanted to do our artifact and Rosetta thing.  Our first thought was that the Greeks, like many other ancient cultures in the Mediterranean area, frequently wrote on papyrus.  It seemed easy enough, it is a simple and common medium, but when we tried to get our hands on papyrus, we immediately started running into difficulties.  First, we tried online, but the fastest reliable shipment method we could find would have taken a full four days (by which time we needed to be translating our new artifact), so we searched to see if there were any local stores that might have it, to no avail.  We considered stone, which was a popular medium at certain Greek time periods, but discarded that idea because of the difficulty of writing into that medium.

Our Rosetta thing and our received artifact, displayed against
The Freschetta box we used to preserve the "Stone"

Quoting the Iliad

Let me start by saying that I can take no credit for finding someone to interview.  After my best efforts, I had found a few people who qualified as people I could interview, but for various reasons, I was unable to set any kind of appointment with them.  Wednesday morning, discouraged, I asked in my morning prayer for help finding someone to interview.  My first class that morning was Book of Mormon with Doctor Seely, and during our class, that discussion ended up (somehow) on oral functions in the Book of Mormon, and Brother Seely actually recited the introduction to the Iliad in Greek.  Talk about answers to prayers, right?

(This is a reconstruction; Minoan palaces don't look like this anymore.)