Rosetta Stone

About:

• The Rosetta Stone is a large stone slab with inscriptions on it and is believed to be a piece of a bigger rock.
• It has inscriptions in three scripts, all of which convey a decree or public message.
• The decree is inscribed three times, in hieroglyphs (suitable for a priestly decree), Demotic (the cursive Egyptian script used for daily purposes, meaning ‘language of the people’), and Ancient Greek (the language of the administration – the rulers of Egypt at this point were Greco-Macedonian after Alexander the Great’s conquest).
• This is similar to how in Ancient India, King Ashoka ordered stambhas or edicts that had messages of Buddha’s teachings and news about victory in a war inscribed. These were then placed throughout the kingdom for the public to see.
• Its discovery that helped develop the specific field of ancient Egypt studies, Egyptology.
• According to the British Museum, the engraving was done during the reign of King Ptolemy V who ruled from 204–181 BC. 
• This stone was ‘rediscovered’ in the time of French king Napoleon Bonaparte, who launched a campaign in Egypt from 1798 to 1801.
• On Napoleon’s defeat later at the hands of the British, the Treaty of Alexandria (1801) led to its transfer and it has been at the British Museum since then.

Source : Indian Express

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