The Rosetta Stone

The fascinating story of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's army and of the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphics, to which it offered the key.

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In July 1799 a French officer serving in Bonaparte's army in Egypt made an interesting discovery. A granite slab unearthed near the small town of Rosetta bore texts in three different scripts - Greek, demotic Egyptian and hieroglyphs. For the first time there was a real hope of decoding Egyptian writing. The Stone was soon stolen from the French by the British Army and removed to the British Museum in London. Now began a remarkable and highly competitive intellectual adventure in which some of the best minds of the time took part. Thomas Young, a remarkable English polymath and physician, and Johann David Akerblad, a Swedish diplomat, made valiant progress towards a solution, but the code was finally cracked by the tireless French orientalist Jean-Fran?ois Champollion. The texts of Ancient Egypt could now be read again after fourteen centuries.