Rosetta Stone

The key that unlocked ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs/Everyday Objects

The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite slab inscribed with a decree issued in 196 BC during the reign of Ptolemy V. The same text appears in three scripts: hieroglyphic, Demotic, and ancient Greek, which allowed Jean-François Champollion to crack the hieroglyphic code in 1822. Found by French soldiers in 1799 near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in Egypt, it has been in the British Museum since 1802, much to Egypt's continued annoyance.