A large dark grey stone slab with a broken top, covered in rows of tiny carved writing, lit in a dark museum case

Chapter Three

Reading the Rosetta Stone

196 BC, and 1799 to 1822

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. Photo: Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The questionHow did anyone learn to read hieroglyphs again?

For about 1,400 years, nobody could read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Then a broken slab of dark stone, found in a wall in 1799, gave scholars the same words in a script they could read, and in two they could not.

The decree
196 BC1
Found
July 17991
Read
September 18221

Fits: Primary (KS2). See Courses.

The story

In 196 BC, a council of Egyptian priests issued a decree praising their young king, Ptolemy V. The Rosetta Stone is a broken piece of a larger slab of dark granodiorite carved with that decree and set up at a temple.1

What makes it special is that the decree is written three times, in three scripts.1

  1. Hieroglyphsthe sacred picture script, for temples and tombs

    14 lines

  2. Demoticthe everyday Egyptian handwriting of the time

    32 lines

  3. Greekthe one scholars in 1799 could read

    53 lines

The surviving stone, script by script, one stroke for every line of text.1

A stone in a wall

Hieroglyphs went out of use. The last known hieroglyphic inscription was carved around AD 400.1 Around 1470, builders putting up a fort near the port of Rashid, which Europeans called Rosetta, built the broken slab into a wall. It stayed there until July 1799, when a member of a French team found it. The French agreed to give it up to the British, and it arrived in England in February 1802.1

18001805181018151820Found in a fort wallHanded to the BritishReaches EnglandYoung: some signs are soundsChampollion announces it
Twenty-three years from the wall to the reading, to scale: found in July 1799, in England by February 1802, Young’s work published in 1819, Champollion’s announcement on 27 September 1822.1

Reading it

Scholars could read the Greek. The question was how the Egyptian scripts matched it. The English scientist Thomas Young noticed that the same group of signs, inside an oval ring called a cartouche, kept appearing, and concluded that it spelled the king’s name, Ptolemy. He also suggested that hieroglyphs could, in rare cases, stand for sounds. He published his findings in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1819.1

The French scholar Jean-François Champollion went further, drawing on his deep knowledge of Coptic, the last form of the Egyptian language. On 14 September 1822, the story goes, he burst into his brother’s office in Paris shouting “Je tiens mon affaire!”, “I’ve got it!”, and fainted. On 27 September he announced that he could read hieroglyphs.1

Closer to us than to the pyramidThe Rosetta decree of 196 BC is about 2,221 years before today. The Great Pyramid was begun in Khufu’s reign, from about 2551 BC: about 2,355 years before the decree.2,1 The priests who wrote it were further in time from the pyramid builders than we are from them.

Key words

Hieroglyphs
The Egyptian script made of pictures. Some signs stand for whole words, and some for sounds.
Demotic
A quick, joined-up Egyptian handwriting, used for everyday writing by the time of the Rosetta Stone.
Decree
An official order or announcement. This one was made by a council of priests.
Cartouche
An oval ring drawn around a royal name in hieroglyphs.
Coptic
The last stage of the Egyptian language, written in Greek letters. Champollion knew it well.
Decipher
To work out how to read a script that nobody can read.

Check yourself

Try to answer in your head, then open each one.

Why was the Rosetta Stone the key to hieroglyphs?

It has the same decree in three scripts. Scholars could read the Greek, so they could compare it with the Egyptian.

Which script has the most lines on the surviving stone?

Greek, with 53. Then Demotic with 32, and hieroglyphs with 14.

What did Thomas Young work out?

That the signs in the repeated cartouches spelled the name Ptolemy, and that some hieroglyphs could stand for sounds.

What did Champollion know that helped him?

Coptic, the late form of the Egyptian language, written in Greek letters.

Go deeper

Sources for this page

Every number on this page comes from one of these. How we check.

Last reviewed 12 November 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.

  1. Solly, M. (27 September 2022). Two Hundred Years Ago, the Rosetta Stone Unlocked the Secrets of Ancient Egypt. Smithsonian Magazine. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/rosetta-stone-hieroglyphs-champollion-decipherment-egypt-180980834/Used for: The Rosetta Stone: its decree, three scripts, finding, journey to London, and how Young and Champollion read it. Checked 12 November 2026.
  2. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Relief fragment with king Khufu’s cattle. Dynasty 4, reign of Khufu, ca. 2551–2528 BC. Collection record 543890, Open Access (CC0). www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/543890Used for: The dates of Khufu’s reign, and a block from his time reused at Lisht. Checked 12 November 2026.