The Rosetta Stone is a black basalt slab bearing an inscription dating from the year 196 BC. It was the crucial key to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the foundation of modern Egyptology. The stone was discovered in 1799 by the French troops in Napoleon's military expedition. They were digging the foundations of an addition to a fort near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta, Lower Egypt. During the treaty of Alexandria in 1801, the stone was ceded to the British, and has been in the British Museum in London ever since. An exact copy of the stone is on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

For 1,500 years Egyptian hieroglyphics had been mute scribblings on walls, meaningless because the ability to read them had been lost. Then the Rosetta Stone explained what the Egyptians wrote during the 3,500 years when they used hieroglyphics.