Rosetta Stone

A fragment of a memorial stele found during the Egyptian military expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte. Its value lies in the fact that it is inscribed with a single text in three languages: Ancient Egyptian (transcribed as hieroglyphs), demotic Egyptian script, and Greek. The text was a decree issued at the beginning of the second century B.C.E., establishing the worship cult of a new divine monarch, the Pharaoh Ptolemy V. Its trilingual nature, added to the genius of Jean-François Champollion, allowed the hieroglyphic system to be deciphered in 1822. Since 1801, the Stone has been kept in the United Kingdom. It is on display today at the British Museum in London.