Rosetta Stone

Carved in 196 BCE during the reign of Ptolemy V, the Rosetta Stone bears the same royal decree written in three scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic script, and Ancient Greek. Discovered by French soldiers near Rosetta (Rashid) in Egypt in 1799, it became the crucial key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics — a script that had been unreadable for nearly 1,400 years. Jean-François Champollion cracked the code in 1822. The Rosetta Stone is now one of the most visited objects in the British Museum, London, where it has been held since 1802.

Ownership of the stone is disputed; Egypt has repeatedly requested its return from the British Museum.

Context

The inscription records a decree issued by a council of priests at Memphis in 196 BCE, confirming the royal cult of the young king Ptolemy V and listing the benefits he had granted to temples. The same text was meant to be displayed in temples across Egypt, which is why it appears in the three scripts used by the country's rulers, priests and administrators.

The Greek section was readable from the start, so scholars could compare it with the other two. Thomas Young made early progress on the Demotic text and on royal names, but Champollion's 1822 breakthrough showed that hieroglyphs combined signs for sounds with signs for ideas, and his knowledge of Coptic helped him to link the signs to the spoken language.

The stone was found by French troops in 1799 and passed to British forces after the French defeat in Egypt, reaching London in 1802 under the terms of a 1801 capitulation. The stone is a fragment of a larger slab, and its legal and ethical status remains the subject of public debate.