page_title: Rosetta Stone
hierarchical_section_title: Rosetta Stone
context_page_description: The Rosetta Stone is a stone with writing carved into it. French soldiers found it in Egypt in 1799. It helped people get a better understanding of the Ancient Egyptian writing system called hieroglyphics. Its discovery led to the translation of Ancient Egyptian writing.
  The stone is named after the city where it was found, Rosetta. Today, that city is called "Rashid". The stone is now in the British Museum in London.
  It had three pieces of writing on it that said the same thing in three different languages. One was in an Ancient Egyptian script called demotic, the local language of the people in Egypt at that time. The other two languages were hieroglyphics and Ancient Greek.
  The historians could already read the Greek. Using this knowledge they were able to work out how to read the Egyptian scripts.
  The complete Greek text, in English, is about 1600–1700 words in length. The text is a royal decree from the Hellenistic period about the taxes of temple priests. It gives them back the tax privileges they had earlier. Some scholars believe that several copies of the Rosetta Stone might exist, as this proclamation must have been made at many temples.
context_section_description: The Rosetta Stone is a stone with writing carved into it.  French soldiers found it in Egypt in 1799. It helped people get a better understanding of the Ancient Egyptian writing system called hieroglyphics. Its discovery led to the translation of Ancient Egyptian writing.
  The stone is named after the city where it was found, Rosetta. Today, that city is called "Rashid". The stone is now in the British Museum in London.
  It had three pieces of writing on it that said the same thing in three different languages. One was in an Ancient Egyptian script called demotic, the local language of the people in Egypt at that time.  The other two languages were hieroglyphics and Ancient Greek.
  The historians could already read the Greek. Using this knowledge they were able to work out how to read the Egyptian scripts.
  The complete Greek text, in English, is about 1600–1700  words in length. The text is a royal decree from the Hellenistic period about the taxes of temple priests. It gives them back the tax privileges they had earlier. Some scholars believe that several copies of the Rosetta Stone might exist, as this proclamation must have been made at many temples.
caption: The writing on the Rosetta Stone (close up) from a replica in Magdeburg
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