This article was originally published on Sept. 21, 2022.
For centuries, scholars looked at ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and scratched their heads. Scholars had no idea what the various symbols signified and the ancient texts were a mystery.
That all changed in 1799 when a large stone was uncovered in Rosetta (now el-Rashid), a port city on the Nile river. The stone was inscribed in three languages — Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic (a form of shorthand for hieroglyphics) and ancient Greek.
Scholars knew ancient Greek, and although it took them several decades, the inscription taught them how to read hieroglyphics. Dubbed “The Rosetta Stone,” this large rock unlocked insight into thousands of years of ancient texts.
