2023-09-27 Wed

On This Day in 1822, Champollion deciphered Rosetta hieroglyphs revealing a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs in the Egyptian writing system.

Rosetta Stone is a 114cm long and 72cm wide black granite stone, broken in antiquity and irregularly shaped.

The Rosetta Stone, erected in 196 B.C.E. at an Egyptian temple during Ptolemy V's reign, is a fragment of a larger slab. It bears a decree by Egyptian priests on his coronation anniversary.

It was found by French soldiers in 1799 during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. It was handed over to British by the French after the imperial battles and is now at the British Museum.