Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte and his army invaded Egypt, Napoleon 's army was helping to repair a fort near the Egyptian town of Rosetta. In the process of dismantling the wall, a member of the expedition discovered a slab of stone with inscriptions from 196 B.C.E., of three languages; hieroglyphics which was the script used for important or religious documents, demotic a commonly used style of Egyptian writing, and Greek which was the language of the rulers of Egypt at that time. (Rosetta Stone). The Rosetta Stone is written in three scripts because when it was written, there were three scripts being used in Egypt The Rosetta Stone was written in all three scripts so that the priests, government officials and rulers of Egypt could read what it said ("Ancient Egypt"). The discovery happened during the French Revolutionary Wars in the present day Rashid. Napoleon and his army were not aware that this eleven inch thick, black basalt rock would be one of the greatest discoveries in history today ( Rosetta Stone). Although scientists have known for a long period of time that the priests of Ancient Egypt used a type of symbol, or picture writing called hieroglyphics. For many years no one was capable of reading this forgotten language (Rosetta Stone) because, scholars were unable to learn or verify facts. The Rosetta Stone was written during the Ptolemaic period, The Rosetta Stone included fourteen lines of hieroglyphs, thirty-two lines of Demotic symbols, and fifty-four lines of Greek. Its dimensions are approximately one meter tall by seventy centimeters wide by thirty centimeters deep. It is called the Rosetta Stone because it was discovered in a town called Rosetta (Rashid) ("Ancient Egypt"). The Rosetta Stone names honors bestowed on Pharaoh Ptolemy V Epiphanes in March 196 B.C. After praising Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the Rosetta Stone describes the siege of Lycopolis and the king 's good deeds for the temple. The text continues with its main

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