When reenacting or acting as a historical interpreter, its good to have a few historical dates and stories to share. This series will publish a few.

The Rosetta Stone was Found
July 19, 1799
by Napoleon’s Army

During Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovered and unusual stone while tearing down an old wall.  This stone was discovered to be the key to actually reading the inscription in the pyramids.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered at el-Rashid (Rosetta) in Egypt in 1799 by an officer in Napoleon’s army, The stone was embedded in an old wall which was being demolished to construct Fort Julien.  This black basalt slab was inscribed with fragments of a text written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests honoring Ptolemy V, the king of Egypt in the second century B.C.E.  More startlingly, the Greek passage also announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000 years.

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