The Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone was discovered in Egypt, at Fort St Julien in el-Rashid, known as Rosetta. It dates from the Ptolem aic Period, 196 BC. The Rosetta Stone the most important objects in the British Museum as holds the key to understanding is one of was used Egyptian hieroglyphs a script made up of small pictures that the originally in Egypt for religious texts. Hieroglyphic writing died out in Egypt i fourth century AD. Over time the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs was lost, until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 and its subsequent decipherment. The text is inscribed in three different scripts. These form three distinct bands of writing. The top band consists of fourteen lines of hieroglyphs: symbols such a an eye, a seated man, a reed and a basket. The middle band is made up of thirty-two lines of a curvilinear script called demotic, the language used in ancient Egypt. Atthe bottom are over fifty lines of tightly compressed Greek writing. The inscriptions are three translations of the same decree, passed by a council of priests cult of the thirteen-year-old Ptolemy v on the first anniversary of his coronation. the early years of the nineteenth century, scholars were able to use the Greek In inscription on this stone as the key to deciphering the others.