How do we know how to pronounce the names of pharaohs and other ancient Egyptian things?

by Celestite44

If the Rosetta Stone taught us how to translate the language of Ancient Egypt (hieroglyphics, I'm pretty sure), it wouldn't teach us how to pronounce names like Tutenkhamen or Nefertiti.

Searocksandtrees

hi! not discouraging any of the subject experts from jumping in here, but fyi, you may be interested in these

The language itself was not lost. The Egyptian language, in its various stages, was regularly spoken from ~3000 BC until the 1600s AD. Hieroglyphs, as you correctly point out, did fall out of use though. ...

Champollion (the decipherer of the Stone) was very much reliant on previous deductions he and others had made about hieroglyphics and his own knowledge of Near Eastern languages. Champollion had a truly staggering command of Near Eastern languages including most importantly the modern descendant of Egyptian, Coptic. Because of this he was able to deduce that the Ancient Egyptian language was most likely an ancestor of Coptic and would follow similar grammatical rules, have substantially related vocabulary, and so on

also, there have been loads of posts asking about pronunciation of ancient languages like Ancient Egyptian; if you want to dive deeper, check these out