During routine repairs in 1799, French soldiers near Rosetta discovered a granodiorite slab inscribed with three scripts. This artefact, the Rosetta Stone, proved to be the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Jean-Francois Champollion’s groundbreaking work, comparing the stone’s inscriptions with Coptic, revealed that hieroglyphs represented sounds, unlocking millennia of Egyptian history.
