Question

read the excerpt from \the rosetta stone.\ egyptian scripts were replaced with coptic, which included six demotic characters. in the ninth century, arab scholar abu bakr ahmad ibn - wahshiyah was able to partly decipher the hieroglyphs by comparing them to coptic. but in the eleventh century, it too was replaced, by arabic. the link was once again severed. for centuries, western scholars tried to decipher the hieroglyphs, with little success. they were working under a false hypothesis, that the hieroglyphs were pictograms, with each symbol representing an object or an idea. which is the best summary of this paragraph? after coptic became the prominent script, it was replaced by arabic, which resulted in breaking societys connection to ancient times. for many centuries, people who spoke a variety of different languages tried to figure out the meaning of hieroglyphs. hieroglyphs are letters, not symbols representing a whole idea, which many scholars throughout history were not aware of. for a long time, scholars from different places tried to figure out the meaning of hieroglyphs, but they mistakenly believed each hieroglyph was a symbol.

Explanation:

The paragraph first tells about the replacement of Egyptian scripts with Coptic and then Arabic. Then it mentions that Western scholars tried to decipher hieroglyphs with little success as they had a wrong hypothesis (hieroglyphs as pictograms). The fourth option combines the long - term effort of scholars and their wrong belief about hieroglyphs, which covers the main points. The first option only focuses on script replacement and its result. The second option is too general about different language speakers. The third option is more about a fact about hieroglyphs rather than summarizing the whole paragraph.

Answer:

For a long time, scholars from different places tried to figure out the meaning of hieroglyphs, but they mistakenly believed each hieroglyph was a symbol.