The famous Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone carries an inscription in different languages which helped decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script. It is the only surviving fragment of a larger stone slab (stela) recording a decress on 27 March, 196 B.C.

At the top the decress was written in hieroglyphs, the traditional script of Egyptian monuments, already 3000 years old. In the middle the same decress was written in Demotic, the everyday script of literate Egyptians, and at the bottom in Greek, the language used by the government.

At this time Egypt was ruled by a Greek dynasty and the decree was issued in honor of the boy-king Ptolemy V Epiphanes. It records the decision of the Egyptian priests to establish a royal cult in return for Ptolemy's concessions to the Egyptian temples. The granitoid stone stela was placed in a temple, probably at the city of Sais near Rashid (Rosetta).

The History of the Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in mid-July 1799 by soldiers in Napoleon's invading army at the town of Rashid (Rosetta).

After Egypt became Christian, the Egyptian temples were closed and many were demolished and their masonry reused. At some time, the Rosetta Stone was broken and moved from its original location to Rashid where it was built into a fortress by the ruler of Egypt, Sultan Qaitbay, in the fifteenth century. In 1799 it was rediscovered as the French were building new defenses. Its importance was immediately recognized, but when the French were defeated, it was surrendered to the British forces as part of the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801. It entered the British Museum in 1802. These events were recorded in painted labels on the sides, reading 'Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801' and 'Presented by King George III'. Copies of the Rosetta Stone were circulated internationally to scholars and within twentyfive years of the Rosetta Stone's discovery, the hieroglyphic script was deciphered.

The writing of ancient Egypt

Egyptian hieroglyphs were first used around 3500 BC and fell out of use at the end of the fourth century AD. After this time, all knowledge of how to read them was lost.

Many European scholars tried to decipher the mysterious script, but because hieroglyphic signs look like pictures, they assumed that all hieroglyphs were images recording ideas without language. In fact hieroglyphs recorded the ancient Egyptian language with a mixture of sound and picture signs.

This is what Champollion realized in 1822, working from the Rosetta Stone and other inscriptions. His decipherment unlocked 4000 years of an ancient written culture and the Rosetta Stone has become an icon of all out attempts to understand the past in its own words.