In July 1799, during Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, a large black stone was dug out of the ground while digging trenches at the mouth of the Nile, not far from the city of Rosetta. The basalt slab, which was broken at the edges, was covered with incomprehensible writings. "The upper part of it was significantly broken off and contained fourteen lines of hieroglyphs, the figures of which are six lines in size from left to right, following the direction of our European languages rather than the one common to Oriental languages.
The second inscription under the hieroglyphic part is the most complete. It consists of 32 lines of alphabetic writings, which go in the opposite direction to the upper inscription, and its character is unknown.
The third part, located directly below the two preceding ones, is a Greek inscription in archaic letters. It contains 54 lines, the last of which are deprived of more or less of their part because a triangular piece is broken off from one of the lower corners.
French officers, however, immediately appreciated their discovery, and General Menu immediately ordered the translation of the Greek text inscribed on the stone. The Greek inscription, which was easy to read, told of the decision of the priests in honor of the Egyptian king Ptolemy (Greek by origin), who ruled in 196 BC. He gave the priests a number of graces, and in gratitude, for this, they decided to put his statue next to the statue of the supreme deity, as well as to declare the birthday of the king and the day of his ascension to the throne days of the temple holidays.
However, no one could read the other two inscriptions. They were hieroglyphs, which were known by the Greek writers. Herodotus, for example, was struck by the Egyptian way of writing: "The Hellenes write and count from left to right, and the Egyptians from right to left, although they claim that they write to the right hand, and the Hellenes to the left. The Egyptians use a double letter: one called sacred, the other - folk, simple. About the same spoke and another Greek scientist - Diodor, and in the Greek text of the Rosetta stone said that the same content is repeated twice in Egyptian: sacred characters and demotic (folk) letters.
The Egyptians themselves called the hieroglyphics "a letter of the word of God", i.e. they revered it as a revelation from above. The patron of knowledge and writing in Egyptian mythology was considered the great and almighty One - the god of the moon, wisdom, bills, and letters. He created writing and taught people to count and write, the Egyptian scribes considered him to be their patron, and before he started his work they made libations for him. He divided the time into months and years, he was called the "lord of time", as he recorded the birthdays and deaths of people and kept chronicles. He ruled "all languages" and was himself considered the language of the god Ptah. The Egyptians called him "an excellent scribe, with clean hands... a scribe of truth, hating sin, a keeper of the hand of the Lord of the World, the ruler of the law.
The Rosetta stone was first exhibited at the Egyptian Institute in Cairo, founded by Napoleon to guide the research of this country. But soon the English fleet defeated the French and threatened to cut off the French troops from France. The remains of Napoleon's army returned back, the British strengthened in Egypt, and under the contract of 1801, they received the Rosetta stone. The basalt slab was taken to England and exhibited in the British National Museum.
As soon as a copy of the Rosetta stone appeared in Europe, scientists from different countries began to study its inscriptions, but their task was very difficult. Although the content of all three inscriptions was known, it was not enough. It was necessary to find out the meaning of each individual sacred character, each demonic sign, it was necessary to understand how the words were made of these signs, how they were pronounced, what were the grammatical rules of the Egyptians.
It took more than 20 years before the right way to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs was found. At that time, Jean François Champollion lived in the French city of Grenoble (with his elder brother Jacques-Joseph). Here he got acquainted with the Egyptian collection of the scientist J.B. Fourier, a participant of the Egyptian expedition of Napoleon. The French scientist appointed by the governor, in addition to his official duties, was busy compiling an extensive introduction to the famous work "Description of Egypt".
In the house of J.B. Fourier it was possible to see fine drawings with the image of the ancient Egyptian monuments, then still not known to anybody, here there were many also original things. The hospitable owner willingly told about Egypt to the senior Champollion who executed at its duties of the house secretary.