I’d heard about the Rosetta Stone for years, especially ads using that expression. Honestly, I thought it was something out of King Arthur’s legend, a Holy Grail sort of thing. It wasn’t until I was looking at an encyclopedia that I ran across an entry for it. Here’s the answer:
In 1799, in Egypt, a stone was found that had writing on it. By this time in history, the ability to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics was gone. The writing on the stone was indecipherable. Scholars could not read it even though it was written in three languages. Nonetheless, because one of the writings was in Greek, the scholars were able to not only translate it, but they learned how to read hieroglyphics. This is why the Rosetta Stone is so iconic. It opened the door to ancient history. It was a key to the past. And one last thing. It was discovered in Rosetta, Egypt.
Suellen Ocean is the author of the Civil War Era Historic Romance, Black Pansy:
Ancestry&History 