Rosetta Stone

It was 210 years ago to the day that the Rosetta Stone was discovered. This one artefact was the key to deciphering Egyption hieroglyphics.

The text on the stone is a decree (basically, a tax amnesty for the priests of the day) from Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the ruler (between 204 and 181 BC) of an area which is now largely Egypt, but crucially it is written in Greek, Hieroglyphs and Demotic (an Egyptian script language).

The stone was discovered by a French soldier during construction work at Rosetta (aka Rashid). It remained in situ under the eye of a number of French scholars until the British took control of the area. The stone was 'captured' in March 1801 and was sent to the British Museum where is has remained since 1802.

The demotic text had been translated by Thomas Young by 1814 but this was expanded upon by Jean-Francois Champollion and he also worked on the translation of the hieroglyphics between 1822 and 1824. In 1858 the first complete English translation was published.

The Rosetta Stone remains synonymous with the key needed to decipher a particular code.