What is the Rosetta Stone?
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian stone slab carved in 196 BC with the same decree in three scripts. It helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs for the first time.
The stone was found in 1799 by French soldiers near the town of Rashid, called Rosetta, in the Nile Delta, during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt. It records a decree issued by priests in honor of King Ptolemy V. The text is written in hieroglyphs, used for religious documents, Demotic, an everyday Egyptian script, and ancient Greek.
Because scholars could read ancient Greek, they could compare it with the Egyptian scripts. English scientist Thomas Young made early progress, and French scholar Jean-François Champollion announced his breakthrough in 1822, showing that hieroglyphs combined sound signs and meaning signs. This unlocked thousands of years of Egyptian history.
Where is it now?
After the British defeated the French in Egypt, the stone was taken to Britain under the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801. It has been displayed in the British Museum in London since 1802 and is one of its most visited objects. Egypt has called for its return.
Did You Know?
The Rosetta Stone is made of granodiorite and weighs about 760 kilograms. It is only a broken part of a larger original slab.