The Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone has a great significance in Ancient Egyptian History. Without it we would still be unable to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians. The Rosetta Stone t is a document that was carved in 196 B.C. and honours the Pharoah of Egypt praising him for the good things he had done for the priests and people of Egypt. The document is in three languages - Greek, Hieroglyphic and Demotic. Hieroglyphic was the language used for important religious documents (the reason for it being carved on temples and so forth) whilst Demotic was the common language used in Ancient Egyptian times. It was made possible to understand the two languages by having the Greek translation along side them upon the stone.
Whilst it was carved in 196 B.C., the stone lay undiscovered until 1799. It was not not until 1822 however that Jean-Francois Champillion, after many years studying Hieroglyphics as well as the Rosetta Stone, finally cracked the secret of Hieroglyphics. He managed to do this with his exceptional understanding of Coptic and Greek language.
The name for the stone derived from the location in which it was found which is of course Rosetta, a small village in the north of Egypt, 65 km to the east of Alexandria. The Rosetta Stone is now a household name for a language course which obviously stems from this famous artifact.
