Study of the decree was already underway when the first complete translation of the Greek text was published in 1803.

Since 1802, it has been on public display at the British Museum almost continuously and is its most visited object. When the British defeated the French they took the stone to London under the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801. Lithographic copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums and scholars. It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslated hieroglyphic script. It was found there in July 1799 by French officer Pierre-François Bouchard during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt.

It was probably moved in late antiquity or during the Mamluk period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid ( Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. The stone was carved during the Hellenistic period and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at Sais. The decree has only minor differences between the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.

The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. 1,123 by 757 by 284 millimetres (44.2 in × 29.8 in × 11.2 in)Īncient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script, and Greek script

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