Rosetta Stone (The)

A stone found in 1799 by M. Boussard, a French officer of engineers, in an excavation made at Fort St. Julien, near Rosetta. It has an inscription in three different languages—the hieroglyphic, the demotic, and the Greek. It was erected B.C. 195, in honour of Ptolemy Epiphʹanēs, because he remitted the dues of the sacerdotal body. The great value of this stone is that it furnished the key whereby the Egyptian hieroglyphics have been deciphered.