How the Rosetta Stone cracked the code of hieroglyphs

A message nobody could read

Ancient Egypt left behind temples, tombs and statues covered in hieroglyphs: little pictures of birds, eyes, snakes, reeds and people. For thousands of years, Egyptian scribes used them to write the names of kings, prayers and important announcements.

But writing can be forgotten. As Egypt changed over many centuries, fewer and fewer people learned the old signs, until nobody could read them at all. By the time our story begins, no one had been able to read hieroglyphs for well over 1,000 years.

People could still admire the carvings, but they could not tell what the pictures meant. Did each sign stand for a whole idea, a word or a sound? Nobody knew. Unlocking them would need a clue.

Soldiers find a strange stone

In July 1799, French soldiers were building up a fort near the town of Rosetta (today called el-Rashid), in Egypt's Nile Delta. They were part of Napoleon Bonaparte's army, which had invaded Egypt. While they worked, they pulled a large, broken slab of dark stone out of an old wall. It was covered in writing.

An officer named Pierre-François Bouchard saw at once that it was special. The stone carried three blocks of writing: hieroglyphs at the top, a flowing everyday Egyptian script called Demotic in the middle, and ancient Greek at the bottom. He guessed, correctly, that all three said the same thing.

The stone is about 1.1 metres tall, 76 centimetres wide and 28 centimetres thick. After the British and their allies defeated the French in Egypt, it was handed over to the British in 1801. It has been in the British Museum in London since 1802, although some people in Egypt would like it to be returned.

Why three scripts mattered

Scholars in Europe could already read ancient Greek. So once the Greek part was translated, they knew what the whole stone said. It was a decree, an official announcement, agreed by a gathering of Egyptian priests in 196 BCE, more than 2,200 years ago. It honoured King Ptolemy V, who was just 13 years old.

The Greek text even explains the three versions. It says the decree should be carved on a slab of hard stone in "sacred" writing (hieroglyphs), "native" writing (Demotic) and Greek letters. Copies were set up in temples across Egypt.

That made the stone like a puzzle with the answer printed beside it. If you know what a sentence says in one script, you can start matching up words and names in the other two.

The race to crack the code

Many clever people tried. They started with the names of kings and queens, because a name sounds much the same in any language. Find "Ptolemy" in the Greek, then hunt for the same sounds in the Egyptian versions. The first progress came with Demotic, because it was the best-preserved Egyptian part of the stone.

In hieroglyphs, royal names are written inside an oval loop called a cartouche. The English scientist Thomas Young worked out some of the signs in the names of Ptolemy and some queens, and which direction the signs should be read. But not all of his answers were right.

The big breakthrough came from a Frenchman, Jean-François Champollion, who had been fascinated by ancient Egypt since childhood. He had studied Coptic, a language that grew out of ancient Egyptian. Using it, he showed that many hieroglyphs stand for sounds. In 1822 he announced his discovery. Hieroglyphs turned out to be a mix: some signs stand for single sounds, some for groups of sounds, and others give clues about a word's meaning.

A family story says that when he realised he was right, he burst into his brother's office, shouted "I've got it!" and fainted. True or not, his work meant people could read ancient Egyptian writing again for the first time in well over 1,000 years.

Why it still matters

Thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the people who studied it, experts can now read the writing on temple walls, tombs, statues and papyrus scrolls. Ancient Egyptians can tell us about their history in their own words. Champollion is often called the father of Egyptology, the study of ancient Egypt.

The stone is not the only copy of its decree. Parts of the same text have since been found on other stones from Egypt. What made this one famous was being found at the right moment, with enough of all three scripts to compare.

Today, people call anything that unlocks a mystery a "Rosetta Stone". If you visit the British Museum, you can see the real thing. Its sides still carry words painted after the British took it: "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801".

📚 Words to know

Hieroglyphs

The picture signs used for writing in ancient Egypt. Some stand for sounds and some help show meaning.

Demotic

A quick, flowing script used for everyday writing in later ancient Egypt.

Decree

An official order or announcement from a ruler or government.

Cartouche

An oval loop drawn around a king's or queen's name in hieroglyphs.

Decipher

To work out the meaning of a code, or of writing that nobody can read.

🧪 Try this: crack a three-script code

1. Invent a secret alphabet: draw a simple symbol for each letter from A to Z on a card. Keep the card hidden. This is your "lost" script.
2. On a strip of paper, write a short message in English that includes two names, such as yours and a friend's. Underneath, write the same message in your symbols. Draw an oval around each name, like a cartouche.
3. Give the strip, but not the alphabet card, to a friend. Their job is to use the names to work out which symbol stands for which letter.
4. Now write a brand-new message using only your symbols. Can your friend read it with the letters they have worked out? That is how the Rosetta Stone helped people read other Egyptian writing too.