The Rosetta Stone : The Story of the Decoding of Egyptian Hieroglyphics

In July 1799 a French officer serving in Bonaparte's army in Egypt made an interesting discovery.

A granite slab unearthed near the small town of Rosetta bore texts in three different scripts - Greek, demotic Egyptian and hieroglyphs.

For the first time there was a real hope of decoding Egyptian writing.

The Stone was soon stolen from the French by the British Army and removed to the British Museum in London.

Now began a remarkable and highly competitive intellectual adventure in which some of the best minds of the time took part.

Thomas Young, a remarkable English polymath and physician, and Johann David Akerblad, a Swedish diplomat, made valiant progress towards a solution, but the code was finally cracked by the tireless French orientalist Jean-Fran?ois Champollion.

The texts of Ancient Egypt could now be read again after fourteen centuries.