Mystery · Lost Languages
The Key to Forgotten Writing
The Rosetta Stone
The question
Why was the Rosetta Stone so important to understanding ancient Egyptian writing?
- It contained the oldest known map of Egypt
- It recorded the names of every pharaoh
- It preserved a decree written in three scripts(correct answer)
The answer: It preserved a decree written in three scripts
The Rosetta Stone carries the same priestly decree, issued in 196 BCE, in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic and ancient Greek. Because scholars could read the Greek, it gave them a way into the other two. Building on work by Thomas Young and others, Jean-François Champollion announced his decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822.
- Civilization
- Ptolemaic Egypt
- Region
- North Africa
- Period
- 196 BCE
- Location
- Found at Fort Saint Julien, Rashid (Rosetta), Egypt; now in the British Museum, London
- Featured in
- Daily Discovery #002 · 3 November 2026
Image: APK, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped) (image source, opens in a new tab)
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