Rosetta Stone is famous because of its role in enabling experts to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Aside from the hieroglyphs, the stone has demotic and Greek types of writing. The writers inscribed the same message on the stone using these writing styles. Therefore, experts who could read either demotic or Greek deciphered the meaning of pictures or symbols in hieroglyphic style. Some priests in an Egyptian temple used the inscriptions on Rosetta Stone to declare their support for King Ptolemy. French soldiers discovered the stone near Rosetta Town in 1799, when Napoleon was in charge of Egypt (The British Museum, 2017). Two years later, the French surrendered Alexandria, the location of the Rosetta Stone, to the British. Since then, the ancient object became English property that has been on display in British Museum since 1802 (The British Museum, 2017). Thus, Thomas Young, an English Physicist, accessed the stone and used its Greek inscriptions to determine the meaning of hieroglyphs. He realized that some symbols describe a royal name, Ptolemy. Jean Champollion, a French scholar, succeeded in translating Egyptian hieroglyphs into Greek and Latin. He based his discoveries about the meaning of hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone and other texts. His breakthrough was the beginning of a better understanding of ancient Egyptian culture.
Reference
The British Museum. (2017). Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone. Web.