Discovery near Rosette

On 15 July 1799, French soldiers working on a fort near Rachid, also known as Rosette, found a large dark stone covered with inscriptions. The stone weighed about 760 kg and had three different inscriptions on it. The site, called Fort Julien, was an ancient Mamluk location that Napoleon had renamed in honor of Thomas Prosper Jullien, who had been assassinated in Egypt.

Context of the site

The French engineers were expanding the fort to control the Nile Delta, and their teams were digging the foundations of an extension. Pierre-François Bouchard, the officer overseeing the work, realized the stone was not an ordinary block of masonry and reported it to his superiors. However, the exact date of the discovery and whether the stone was part of a wall or lying on the ground remain uncertain.

The stone’s inscriptions

The stone bore the same decree written in three scripts: hieroglyphs, demotic, and Greek. The text dates back to 196 BCE and was a decree from a council of priests affirming the royal cult of Ptolemy V, who was 13 years old at the time. The discovery was first reported in the Courier de l'Égypte, a Cairo newspaper, and Bouchard sent the stone to Cairo for scholars at the Institute of Egypt to examine.

Spread of the text

The Institute of Egypt had about 150 scholars who documented Egypt’s history, geography, and culture. These scholars shared the inscriptions by making rubbings, drawings, and molds, sending copies to experts across Europe. As a result, the text was widely known long before the original stone changed hands.

Transfer to British hands

In 1801, after the British captured Alexandria, the stone came into their possession. Bouchard, however, did not have a peaceful end to his time in Egypt. He had been imprisoned in Damascus for 42 days and was captured again when the garrison of Fort Julien surrendered to British and Ottoman forces. He was released after the Egyptian War and returned to Marseille in July 1801.

Deciphering the text

It took 23 years to decipher the inscriptions. On 27 September 1822, Jean-François Champollion published a memo that unlocked the reading of hieroglyphs. He used the fact that the same message was repeated in all three scripts, with Greek—already understood—serving as a key to the others.

The stone today

The stone, now displayed at the British Museum since 1802, is often called the most visited object in the museum. Despite being a fragment, it has drawn more attention than any mummy or statue in the collection. The top of the stele and part of the lower left corner are missing, and it is believed the missing section depicted Ptolemy V offering to the gods. The stone was likely originally from a temple, possibly in Saïs, before being reused in the fort’s walls.