The Rosetta Stone: The Story of the Decoding of Hieroglyphics: The Story of the Decoding of Egyptian Hieroglyphics. This item is unavailable.The Rosetta Stone: The Story of the Decoding of Hieroglyphics: The Story of the Decoding of Egyptian Hieroglyphics

In July 1799 a French officer serving in Bonaparte's army in Egypt made an interesting discovery. A granite slab unearthed near the small town of Rosetta bore texts in three different scripts - Greek, demotic Egyptian and hieroglyphs. For the first time there was a real hope of decoding Egyptian writing. The Stone was soon stolen from the French by the British Army and removed to the British Museum in London. Now began a remarkable and highly competitive intellectual adventure in which some of the best minds of the time took part. Thomas Young, a remarkable English polymath and physician, and Johann David Akerblad, a Swedish diplomat, made valiant progress towards a solution, but the code was finally cracked by the tireless French orientalist Jean-Fran?ois Champollion. The texts of Ancient Egypt could now be read again after fourteen centuries.

Dominique Valbelle is Director of the Institute of Egyptology at the University of Lille III and President of the French Egyptological Society.

Robert Sole, whose origins are Egyptian, is a novelist (published here by Harvill) and journalist.