Item Size:  14" High      Type:  Wall Plaque  

Material:  Casting Stone, with Black Basalt Finish

Original:  From an Egyptian temple, 196 B.C.E.  Found near Rashid (Rosetta), Nile Delta, 1799

Current Location of Original:  British Museum, London

The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stela that was first set up in a temple, possibly at Sais, as an elaborate “thank you” to the Greek ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy V, who reigned in the 2nd century B.C.E., for favors that he had given to the priests. The stone was discovered in 1799 at Fort Julien, near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta, by a soldier named Pierre-François Bouchard, of the French expedition to Egypt. It includes an inscription of the decree that King Ptolemy V had issued at Memphis in 196 B.C.E., and the decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs; the middle portion, Demotic script; and the lowest, Ancient Greek. As it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences), it provided the French archaeologist, Jean-Francois Champollion, with the means to decipher the Egyptian symbols. After twenty years of effort, Champollion's work on the Rosetta Stone resulted in a major breakthrough in its translation. With time and further advancements, scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian inscriptions confidently. But it was the Rosetta Stone that provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.