Rosetta Stone

ancient Egyptian stele with inscriptions in three writing systems

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The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian monument that bears inscriptions written in three different writing systems. It was historically significant because the presence of these multiple scripts allowed scholars to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, a writing system that had been lost and unreadable for centuries.

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Described at

The Rosetta Stone - Download Free 3D model by The British Museum (@britishmuseum) [1e03509]

Part of grey and pink granodiorite stela bearing priestly decree concerning Ptolemy V in three blocks of text: Hieroglyphic (14 lines), Demotic (32 lines) and Greek (54 lines). The inscription is a decree passed by a council of priests, one of a series that affirm the royal cult of the 13 year-old Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. - The Rosetta Stone - Download Free 3D model by The British Museum (@britishmuseum)

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Wikidata facts

Image: Rosetta Stone - front face - corrected image.jpg
Height: 112.3
Width: 75.7

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Commons category: Rosetta Stone

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Article

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.

The stone was carved during the Hellenistic period and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at Sais. It was probably moved in late antiquity or during the Mamluk period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. It was found there in July 1799 by French army officer Pierre-François Bouchard during France's invasion of Egypt. It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslated hieroglyphic script. Lithographic copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums and scholars. When the British defeated the French, they took the stone to London under the terms of the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801. Since 1802, it has been on public display at the British Museum almost continuously and it is the most visited object there.