19 July 1799 - Rosetta Stone is Discovered

The Rosetta Stone, a block of basalt with engraved inscriptions on it's polished surface, was the most significant discovery in the field of Egyptology. It was discovered amongst building rubble near the town of Rosetta (Rashid, about 35 miles from Alexandria) by one of Napoleon's soldiers. When Napoleon was defeated in Egypt by the British in 1801 the Rosetta Stone became British property and was shipped to the British Museum. The inscriptions, in three different ancient scripts: Egyptian Hieroglyphic, Egyptian Demotic, and Greek allowed scholars to piece together the phonetic representation of proper nouns in Ancient Egyptian. Competition between the British (Thomas Young) and French (Jean Francois Champollion) to be the first to translate the hieroglyphic text was intense, with Champollion publishing his successful achievements in 1822.

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