What is the history of the Rosetta Stone?
The Rosetta Stone is a stone slab inscribed with three versions of a decree issued by Ptolemy V, the third ruler of the Egyptian Pharaonic dynasty. It was found in 1799 by Jean-François Champollion during his excavation of the ancient Egyptian city of Rosetta (modern-day El-Rashid). The inscription on the stone contains text written in three different languages: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script and Greek. The stone was used as a key to deciphering the hieroglyphs, which allowed scholars to translate the texts into modern languages.