What is the Rosetta Stone?

The Rosetta Stone, which is housed in the British Museum, is a black, possibly basalt slab with three languages on it (Greek, demotic and hieroglyphs) each saying the same thing. Because the words are translated into the other languages, it provided Jean-Francois Champollion the key to the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Discovery of the Rosetta Stone:

Discovered at Rosette (Raschid) [see map of Nile Delta] in 1799, by Napoleon's army, the Rosetta Stone proved the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. The person who found it was Pierre Francois-Xavier Bouchards, a French officer of engineers. It was sent to the Egyptian Institute in Cairo and then taken to London in 1802.

Rosetta Stone Content:

The British Museum describes the Rosetta Stone as a priestly decree affirming the cult of 13-year-old Ptolemy V.

The Rosetta Stone tells of an agreement between Egyptian priests and the pharaoh on March 27, 196 B.C. It names honors bestowed on Macedonian Pharaoh Ptolemy V. After praising the pharaoh for his generosity, it describes the siege of Lycopolis and the king's good deeds for the temple. The text continues with its main purpose: establishing a cult for the king.

Physical Description of the Rosetta Stone:

From the Ptolemaic Period, 196 B.C. Height: 114,400 cm (about 4 feet tall) Width: 72.300 cm (about 2.5 feet wide) Thickness: 27.900 cm (about 1 inches thick) Weight: about 760 kilograms (exactly 1,676 lb.)

Location of the Rosetta Stone:

The British Museum has housed the Rosetta Stone since 1802, except for the years 1917-1919 when it was temporarily moved underground to prevent possible bomb damage. Prior to its discovery in 1799 it had been in the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta), in Egypt.

Languages of the Rosetta Stone:

1. Demotic (the everyday script, used to write documents),2. Greek (the language of Ionian Greeks, an administrative

script), and 3. Hieroglyphs (for priestly business).

Deciphering the Rosetta Stone:

No one could read hieroglyphs at the time of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, but scholars soon pieced out a few phonetic characters in the demotic section, which, by comparison with the Greek, were identified as proper names. Soon proper names in the hieroglyphic section were identified because they were circled. These circled names are called cartouches.

Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832) was said to have learned enough Greek and Latin by the time he was 9-years-old to read Homer and Virgil. He studied Persian, Ethiopic, Sanskrit, Zend, Pahlevi and Arabic, and worked on a Coptic dictionary by the time he was 19. Champollion finally found the key to translating the Rosetta Stone in 1822.