Discovered in 1799 by French soldiers, the Rosetta Stone became the key to understanding ancient Egyptian writing after centuries of mystery.
Three Scripts, One Message
The stone contains the same text in:
Hieroglyphics
Demotic script
Ancient Greek
Because scholars already understood Greek, they could compare the scripts.
Champollion’s Breakthrough
In 1822, French scholar Jean-François Champollion realized hieroglyphs were not just symbols but a combination of:
Phonetic sounds
Ideograms
Determinatives
His discovery unlocked thousands of years of Egyptian history, religion, and literature.
A Global Impact
Without the Rosetta Stone, modern Egyptology would not exist. It remains one of the most significant archaeological finds in history.
