September 27th marked the deciphering of the Rosetta stone, one that explained the ancient Egyptian language, hieroglyphs, thanks to the French scholar Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered the letters on the stone in 1822. The importance of the stone is stemmed out of the fact that after the end of the fourth century AD, when hieroglyphs had gone out of use, the knowledge of how to read and write them disappeared, but not after deciphering the Rosetta Stone. On July 2, 1798, Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte occupied Alexandria starting the French campaign on territories that affiliate with the British crown, accompanied by savants that traveled with the army to discover the history and geography of Egypt, they drew the map of Egypt and completed it in 1806, founding the science of Egyptology. The stone was discovered in mid-July 1799 by Lieutenant of Engineers, Pierre François Xavier Bouchard, under unclear circumstances. Some say it was found just lying on the ground. Others claim that it was part of an old wall which was ordered to be demolished by French soldiers in order to extend Fort Julien. The Rosetta stone is a block of basalt with engravings made on its polished surface. It was named after the village where it was found, Rashid (known as Rosetta) located a few miles away from the sea in the western delta of the Nile. It measures 114cm in height, 72cm in width and 28cm in thickness and weighs 762kg. Unlike what people think, the stone does not date back to the Pharaonic era, it belongs to the family of the Ptolemaic dynasty, by Rosetta Stone is a decree passed by a council of priests, under the reign of the 13-year-old Ptolemy V, on the first anniversary of his coronation. After the end of the Pharaonic times, priests were the only people who had kept the knowledge of writing hieroglyphs. In the Ptolemaic era, decrees in hieroglyphs such as this were usually set up by the king. The decree is inscribed on the stone three times, in hieroglyphic (suitable for a priestly decree), demotic (the native script used for daily purposes), and Greek (the language of the administration), according to the official website of the British Museum, where the stone is being exhibited until this moment. Scholars immediately recognized that this stone contained the key to deciphering the ancient Egyptian language. This was because it appeared that the stone's message was repeated in the three scripts, and because the Greek could be read. The discovery of the stone was not made public until September 1799, in an article printed in the Courrier de l'Egypte. The Rosetta stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, with only one break. The stone spent two years in a station on the Postal Tube Railway 50 feet below the ground at Holborn by the end of the First World War, in 1917, fearing the heavy bombing in London. Champollion was born in Figeac, France, on December 23, 1790. By the age of 16, he had learned six ancient Middle Eastern languages as well as Latin and Greek. When he was 19, he was named as a professor of history at the Lyceum of Grenoble. He was obsessed with deciphering the hieroglyphics. In 1826, Champollion became director of the Egyptian collection at the Louvre museum in Paris, and two years later, he conducted an archaeological expedition in Egypt.
