British Museum
The Rosetta Stone carries an inscription in different languages which helped decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script. It is the only surviving fragment of a larger stone slab (stela) recording a decree on 27 March, 196 BC.
At the top the decree was written in hieroglyphs the traditional script of Ecyptian monuments, then aready 3000 years old. In the middle the same decree was written in Demotic, the everycay script of literate Egyptians, and at the bottom in Greek, the language used by the government.
At this time Egypt was ruled by a Greek dynasty and the decree was issued in honour of the boy-king Ptolemy Epiphanes. It records the decision of the Egyptian priests to establish a royal cult in return for Ptolemy's concessions to the Egyptian temples. The granodiorite stela was placed in a temple, probably at the city of Sais near Rashid (Rosetta).
The Rosetta Stone was discovered in mid-July 1799 by soldiers in Napoleon's invading army at the town of Rashid (Rosetta).
After Egypt became Christian, the Egyptian temples were closed and many were demolished and their masonry reused. At some time, the Rosetta Stone was broken and moved from its original location to Rashid where it was built into a fortress by the ruler of Egypt, Sultan Qaitbay, in the fifteenth century. In 1799 it was rediscovered as the French were building new defences. Its mportance was immediately recognised but when the French were defeated, it was surrendered to the British forces as part of the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801. It entered the British Museum in 1802. These events were recorded in painted labols on the sides, reading 'Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801' and 'Presented by King George III'. Copies of the Rosetta Stone were circulated internationally to scholars, and within twenty-five years of the Rosetta Stone's discovery, the hieroglyphic script was deciphered.
