The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences across the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.

In July 1799, the stone was found in the city of Rosetta (modern el Rashid) by French soldiers during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Rosetta was located on a tributary of the Nile near the Mediterranean coast east of Alexandria. Napoleon’s forces were constructing fortifications when the large inscribed stone fragment was uncovered by officer Pierre François Xavier Bouchard (1772–1832). He immediately recognized the significance of the juxtaposed Greek and hieroglyphic scripts, predicting correctly that each script represented a translation of a single text.

Study of the decree was already underway when the first complete translation of the Greek text was published in 1803. Jean-François Champollion announced the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts in Paris in 1822.

Since 1802, it has been on public display at the British Museum.