The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a granite-like stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in the name of the Egyptian king Ptolemy V, confirming the status of the priests. The decree is written in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic and ancient Greek. French soldiers found it in 1799, near the town of Rashid, or Rosetta, in the Nile Delta, during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, and it passed into British hands after the French defeat. It has been in the British Museum since 1802. Because scholars could read the Greek, it enabled Thomas Young and especially Jean-Francois Champollion to decipher hieroglyphs, a breakthrough that Champollion announced in 1822.
Before and after
- from 202 BCE to 46 BCEKingdom of Numidia
- 3rd century BCEConstruction of Ajanta Caves
- 200 BCEOrigins of Nazca Lines
- from 200 BCE to 197 BCESecond Macedonian War
- 196 BCERosetta Stone
- from 192 BCE to 188 BCERoman–Seleucid War
- 190 BCEBirth of Hipparchus
- 183 BCEDeath of Hannibal
- from 180 BCE to 10 CEIndo-Greek Kingdoms
More in Art, literature & culture
- c. 2,100s BCEEpic of Gilgamesh
- c. 1,500 BCEOrigins of Zoroastrianism
- c. 750s BCEThe Homeric epics are composed
- 6th century BCEOrigins of Judaism
- 33 CEOrigins of Christianity
- 42 CEOrigins of Coptic Orthodox Church
The era
This moment belongs to the Ancient civilizations (3,200 BCE to 500 CE), writing, cities and empires. You can also browse everything in the 2nd century BCE.