| to see image details
The full-size illustrations of the three sections of the Rosetta Stone were prepared from
casts of the stone that were made in Egypt, before the stone was handed over to the British.
A better cast of the top portion, with the hieroglyphs, was needed. Edme Jomard, editor in chief of the Description was allowed to make a plaster cast in the British Museum in 1815, which was then used for the plate illustrating that part of the Stone.
The text – hieroglyphs at top, ancient Egyptian demotic in the center, and Greek at the bottom –
is the same in all three scripts. By studying them, Jean-François Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs in 1822.
|Detail of the Rosetta Stone, with the cartouche of the word “Ptolemy,”
from the Description de l'Égypte Antiquités. The elongated ovals, or cartouches, in the hieroglyphic section always contain a royal name.