For hundreds of years, the glorious history of Ancient Egypt remained a mystery to the world, its secrets locked away in the baffling language of the hieroglyphs.
But in 1799, French troops near the Egyptian town of Rosetta discovered an ancient basalt slab that would prove to be the key to unlocking Egypt's mysteries. Carved in 196 BC, the Rosetta stone bore a decree praising the Egyptian king Ptolemy V etched in hieroglyphs, demotic Egyptian and Greek. And see how, within a few years, the secrets revealed because of the Rosetta Stone had transformed our understanding of the ancient world.
I. How found, Who, What, When, Where, Why.
The arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte's troops in 1798 (accompanied by 175 artists, scholars, and scientists intent on studying the varied aspects of Egypt) signalled a real turning point in our knowledge of Ancient Egypt. Numerous ancient remains of Egypt were studied; those apparently most important were correctly engraved, and for the first time, accompanied by scientific descriptions. During the course of some military construction near Rosetta, a village in the Delta, soldiers discovered a basalt tablet bearing in inscription in three different types of writing: Greek, Demotic and Hieroglyphic. This granite slab measured 118 centimetres high, 77 centimetres wide, 30 centimetres thick and weighed 762 kilograms (Brewer et. Al.). The stone was submitted to the Commission of Arts and Sciences who copied the texts and made casts of the stone which was very fortunate because two years later, after the defeat of the French army, the British took the stone and sent it to the British Museum, where it is still on display today. Scholars assumed correctly that the three forms of writing contained the same text, but it would be awhile before Egypt's hieroglyphic mysteries would be unlocked. .
II. Deciphering the Stone.
Discrepancies.
According to The British Museum and most other published British sources, the deciphering of the stone was mainly the work of British physician and physicist Thomas Young, who determined the direction in which certain symbols were to be read.