1799–1822Reputable sourceWell documented
The Rosetta Stone and the Recovery of Lost Scripts
On the timeline · around 1799–1822 ·
What happened
For centuries the ancient scripts of Egypt and Mesopotamia lay unreadable. Then a stone unearthed in Egypt in 1799 — the Rosetta Stone — carried the same decree in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic, and Greek. Using the Greek as a key, Jean-François Champollion cracked the hieroglyphic code in 1822, and other lost scripts followed.
Why it matters
Deciphering the ancient scripts reopened thousands of years of history that had fallen silent, letting the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia speak in their own words again — a triumph that founded the modern study of the ancient world.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Rosetta Stone · Reputable source
Related timelines
- Ancient Egypt → — Reading the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt again