18 Facts About Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes.

Rosetta Stone was carved during the Hellenistic period and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at Sais.

The Rosetta Stone is no longer unique, but it was the essential key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilisation.

The term 'Rosetta Stone' is used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.

Rosetta Stone had become ruler at the age of five after the sudden death of both of his parents, who were murdered in a conspiracy that involved Ptolemy IV's mistress Agathoclea, according to contemporary sources.

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The Rosetta Stone had been deciphered long before they were found, but later Egyptologists have used them to refine the reconstruction of the hieroglyphs that must have been used in the lost portions of the hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone.

Rosetta Stone was defeated in battle, and the remnant of his army retreated to Alexandria where they were surrounded and besieged, with the stone now inside the city.

Rosetta Stone has been exhibited almost continuously in the British Museum since June 1802.

The Rosetta Stone was transferred to the sculpture gallery in 1834 shortly after Montagu House was demolished and replaced by the building that now houses the British Museum.

Rosetta Stone was originally displayed at a slight angle from the horizontal, and rested within a metal cradle that was made for it, which involved shaving off very small portions of its sides to ensure that the cradle fitted securely.

Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London towards the end of the First World War in 1917, and the Rosetta Stone was moved to safety, along with other portable objects of value.

Rosetta Stone's work was believed to be authoritative, yet it was misleading in many ways, and this and other works were a lasting impediment to the understanding of Egyptian writing.

Rosetta Stone produced a skillful suggested reconstruction, which was being circulated by the Society of Antiquaries alongside its prints of the inscription.

Rosetta Stone called it "cursive Coptic" because he was convinced that it was used to record some form of the Coptic language, although it had few similarities with the later Coptic script.

Rosetta Stone realised that the middle text was in this same script.

Rosetta Stone noticed that these characters resembled the equivalent ones in the demotic script, and went on to note as many as 80 similarities between the hieroglyphic and demotic texts on the stone, an important discovery because the two scripts were previously thought to be entirely different from one another.

In November 2005, Hawass suggested a three-month loan of the Rosetta Stone, while reiterating the eventual goal of a permanent return.

Term Rosetta stone has been used idiomatically to denote the first crucial key in the process of decryption of encoded information, especially when a small but representative sample is recognised as the clue to understanding a larger whole.