The writing on the stone is a decree issued jointly by the Pharaoh, Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205-180 BC), and a council of Egyptian priests. The council took place on March 27, 196 BC, the day after the first anniversary of the 14-year-old Pharaoh's coronation. The text itself is referred to as the Decree of Memphis, and has been found in several other locations in Egypt. It cancelled debts and taxes, released prisoners, and granted increased donations to the temples.



The last sentence of the decree reads: "This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in sacred (hieroglyphic) and native (Demotic) and Greek characters and set up in each of the first, second and third rank temples beside the image of the ever-living king." Accordingly, our copy of the Rosetta Stone is housed next to a (replica) coin showing the image of Pharaoh Ptolemy V Epiphanes and a genuine coin which was minted during his reign. More informartion can be found from the British Museum: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=117631&partId=1



Brigham Young University-Idaho is the first university in the world to obtain a full-size, 3D replica of the Rosetta Stone from The Freeman Institute. The replica was obtained to help students get a real view at what the stone is like. The replica is 40% resin and 60% granodiorite filler. It also contains a high density foam core to lessen the weight. It is one of the most important pieces to language and culture as it unveiled the Egyptian language and culture to the world.

Why is the Rosetta Stone important?

Before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, scholars had not been able to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, so very little was understood about the Egyptian culture. The Rosetta Stone has the same text written in three styles/languages: 1) hieroglyphics ( top), which can be written in either direction, but in this case they read right to left; 2) Demotic ( middle), a cursive form of Egyptian written from right to left; and 3) ancient Greek ( bottom), written left to right. Egyptian pharaohs were actually Greek by this date, so Greek was their common tongue. Because scholars could read Greek in 1799, they were able to work out the meaning of the hieroglyphic characters. Thomas Young of England deciphered the demotic script, but young Jean-François Champollion of France, who worked in the library in Grenoble for a time, succeeded in working out the structure of the hieroglyphic characters. He started by finding and deciphering the characters for Ptolemy's name in the Greek and hieroglyphic versions, and published the translation of the full text in 1824. Decoding hieroglyphic symbols opened up the entire Egyptian culture to the modern world.



"More than half of the decree is lost from the hieroglyphic section, originally an estimated 29 lines. The Greek occupies 54 lines, with many errors in the inscription, and the demotic 32, with its last two lines inscribed in a fulsome style to fill the space. The sides taper slightly towards the top. The original shape of the stela is shown in a sign in line 14 of the hieroglyphic text. The stela almost certainly had a rounded top headed by a winged sun-disk, and probably a scene with figures in Egyptian style, similar to that showing the king and queen between two groups of gods on another stela with a copy of the Canopus Decree issued in 238 BC under Ptolemy II." (Parkinson, 26)





Michael Coe, noted scholar of Mayan hieroglyphics, called the Rosetta Stone "the most famous piece of rock in the world." (Parkinson, 19)

Who found the stone, and when?

It was found in July 1799 by scholars ("savants") sent to Egypt by Napoleon. They were tearing down a ruined wall in Fort Julien in the town of Rosetta when they came across a broken stone with writing in three languages. They looked for other pieces but did not find any. (Giblin, 25)

The stone could not have originally been placed in Rosetta, since that town did not even exist during Ptolemy's era. It was built later on sediment from the Nile River. It is probable that the stone was already broken when it was moved to the place where it was discovered. (Parkinson, 26)

The stone undoubtedly was housed in a temple elsewhere, perhaps in Sais, which is 40 miles upstream from Rosetta. (Ray, 3)

Who translated the hieroglyphics?

Working from the Greek text at the bottom of the stone, the British scholar Thomas Young (1773-1829) succeeded in deciphering the demotic text (in the middle of the stone) - a cursive form of Egyptian - in 1814. Young started work on the hieroglyphic text, but then moved on to other projects.The Frenchman Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) took on the task of puzzling out the hieroglyphic symbols. Champollion had taught himself to read at age 5 and had mastered a dozen languages by the age of 16. He devoted himself to deciphering the hieroglyphic text of the Rosetta Stone, working on the project from 1822 to 1824. The challenge of hieroglyphics lie in the fact that it was unclear whether each symbol represented a letter, a sound, or a concept.