The Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone provides us with a key to understanding the language, and therefore, the world of the ancient Egyptians. Discovered in 1799, the rock stele is inscribed with a decree issued by the Egyptian King Ptolemy V at all the way back in 196 BC. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion is Demotic script, and the lowest is Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts, the Rosetta Stone was the essential key the modern world needed for the understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.