The Rosetta Stone is a slab of black stone just over 1m tall, that was carved with three different kinds of written language towards the end of Ancient Egyptian times (that is about 196BC). It is an announcement (proclamation) by King Ptolemy V. It was written in three languages so that everyone would be clear what the king intended no matter what language they could read. The top part is written in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle part in a form of writing the Ancient Egyptians had developed to speed up writing (hieroglyphs are very slow to write) and the bottom part is in Greek. The bottom part is in Greek because, at this time, the Ancient Egyptians were part of the Greek empire.

Now, although there are huge numbers of hieroglyphs on Ancient Egyptian temples and so on, by modern times, the meaning of these symbols had been lost, so archaeologists had no idea what they said. The Rosetta Stone is so important because it had hieroglyphs alongside Greek. As everyone knew what Greek meant, the stone was like a key to the ancient world.

But it was not all that simple. It took over twenty years for people to be able to understand it.

Since that time a few other similar stones have been found, but it was the Rosetta Stone that unlocked one of the great mysteries of the Ancient Egyptians, and one reason we know so much more about what they were like than before it was translated.

The stone has been on public display at the British Museum since 1802. It is the most-visited object in the British Museum. A copy is in the front of the main hall in the Cairo Museum.