Photo of the Rosetta Stone in a British Museum
The discovery of the Rosetta Stone is important in the study of Biblical Archaeology, it ushered in the era of modern Egyptology and opened our eyes to 3000 years of peculiar pictures inscribed on Egyptian temples, statues, and monuments, and a wealth of information verifying and never contradicting the Scriptures.
The Rosetta Stone
Height: 114.400 cm (max.)
Width: 72.300 cm
Thickness: 27.900 cm
Excavated by Pierre François Xavier Bouchard
Gift of George III
EA 24
Room 4: Egyptian sculpture
From Fort St Julien, el-Rashid (Rosetta), Egypt
Ptolemaic Period, 196 BC
The stone was 3 ft 9 in. (114 cm) long and 2 ft 4 1/2 in. (72 cm) wide, and partly broken. It had three horizontal bands with inscriptions carved in 2 languages, Egyptian and Greek, with 3 different scripts on each band: hieroglyphics, demotic script, and koine Greek. The Greek section, which was already known, indicated that all 3 texts contained the same message. The inscriptions, apparently written by the priests of Memphis, summarize benefactions given to Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205-180 BC) and were written in the ninth year of his reign in commemoration of his accession to the throne. When the French surrendered to Britain in 1801 the stone was brought to Britain and it now remains at the British Museum in London.
