BrightKidz Library
Subjects
The Rosetta Stone and its three scripts A slab of stone with a broken top corner, carved with three bands of writing one above the other: picture signs at the top, flowing joined-up marks in the middle, and rows of even upright letters at the bottom. To the left, one sign from each band is shown again and tied together with a dashed line, because all three bands say exactly the same thing.

Cracking the Code: The Rosetta Stone

About 5 minutes

The Rosetta Stone is a slab of rock carved with the same message written out three times, in three different scripts.

What is the Rosetta Stone?

The Rosetta Stone has the same message written in three different scripts:

That is a message in a secret code (the hieroglyphs) sitting right beside a translation in a language people could already read (the Greek).

Why Was It So Important?

For hundreds of years, nobody could read hieroglyphs. Because the Rosetta Stone repeated the same text in Greek, scholars could match each Greek word to the hieroglyphic and demotic signs beside it and work out what those signs meant.

Thanks to the Rosetta Stone, historians can now read ancient Egyptian stories, learn about their pharaohs, and understand their beliefs.

Where is the Rosetta Stone Now?

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 by soldiers in Napoleon's army in Egypt. It's named after the town of Rosetta (now called Rashid) near where it was found.

Today, you can see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum in London. It is one of the most popular objects there, and people come from all over the world to see it.

The same message, carved three times A tall slab of stone standing upright, with its top left corner broken away. Two lines divide the face into three bands, one above the other. The top band is covered in small picture signs and is labelled Hieroglyphs. The middle band is covered in flowing joined-up marks and is labelled Demotic. The bottom band is covered in rows of even upright letters and is labelled Ancient Greek. The three bands look completely different, and all three say exactly the same thing. Hieroglyphs Demotic Ancient Greek

Check yourself

Three scripts, one message. Which one let scholars crack the other two?

The stone did not need to say anything new. It only needed to say the same thing twice — once in a script nobody could read, and once in a script everybody could.

Three royal names written in Egyptian signs, with the Greek spelling beside each one. Give a sound to a sign and that sound appears in every name that uses it. The signs you win in Ptolemy are the signs you spend in Cleopatra. The last two signs look almost the same, and only one of them also stands in a name you have already read.