In July 1799, French soldiers of Napoleon's army in Egypt, rebuilding a fort at Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile delta, discovered a slab of black granodiorite inscribed with the same decree of 196 BC in three scripts: hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic and Greek. Scholars could read the Greek, and so had a key to the others. After the British defeated the French in 1801, the stone passed to Britain under the Treaty of Alexandria and has been in the British Museum since 1802. Egypt has asked for its return. Its decipherment opened up 3,000 years of Egyptian history.
Before and after
- from 15 April 1799 to 11 September 1799Suvorov's Italian campaign
- 20 May 1799Birth of Honoré de Balzac
- 26 May 1799Birth of Alexander Pushkin
- from 5 June 1799 to 1 January 1804Alexander von Humboldt begins his American expedition
- 15 July 1799The Rosetta Stone is found
- from 9 November 1799 to 10 November 1799Coup of 18 Brumaire
- 14 December 1799Death of George Washington
- from 1 January 1800 to 17 August 1945Dutch East Indies
- from 1800 to 1900Rise of Romantic music
More in Civilizations & archaeology
- from 18 May 1804 to 7 July 1815First French Empire
- from 1815 to 1871Unification of Italy
- 16 March 1815Founding of Kingdom of the Netherlands
- from 1 March 1867 to 28 October 1918Austria–Hungary
- from 1 January 1871 to 9 November 1918German Empire
- 24 July 1911Hiram Bingham reaches Machu Picchu
The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 18th century.