Rosetta Stone

Illustration

Mark Cartwright
by Trustees of the British Museum
published on 02 January 2014
Rosetta Stone Download Full Size Image

The Rosetta Stone is an incomplete grey and pink granodiorite stela dating from 196 BCE which presents a priestly decree concerning King Ptolemy V of Egypt. The text is in three different versions: Hieroglyphic, Demotic and Greek. The stone was discovered at Port Saint Julien, el-Rashid (Rosetta) on the Nile Delta in Egypt in 1799 CE by Pierre Francois Xavier Bouchard. Thomas Young first identified some of the hieroglyphs related to Ptolemy V but the full text was deciphered by Jean-François Champollion in the early 1820s CE and so the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs, lost for 1600 years, was finally re-discovered. (British Museum, London)

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APA Style

Museum, T. o. t. B. (2014, January 02). Rosetta Stone. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/2198/rosetta-stone/

Chicago Style

Museum, Trustees of the British. "Rosetta Stone." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified January 02, 2014. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/2198/rosetta-stone/.

MLA Style

Museum, Trustees of the British. "Rosetta Stone." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 02 Jan 2014. Web. 12 Oct 2024.

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