A quiz question · easy
Why did the Rosetta Stone make the decipherment of hieroglyphs possible?
The Greek could be read at once; royal names in cartouches anchored the phonetics. Champollion cracked the system in 1822 — 'Je tiens l'affaire!' — and fainted.
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The Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a broken slab of granodiorite carrying one priestly decree of 196 BC in three scripts — hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek. Found by Napoleon's soldiers in 1799 and surrendered to Britain in 1801, it gave Champollion the key to deciphering hieroglyphs in 1822, unlocking three thousand years of Egyptian writing. Egypt has formally requested its return.
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