ROSETTA STONE is the name given to a stone in the British Museum, which was originally found by the French in 1799 among the ruins of Fort St. Julien, which is near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. It was delivered up to the British on the capitulation of Alexandria, and was brought to England in the year 1802. This stone, which is a piece of black basalt, contains parts of three distinct inscriptions : the highest on the stone is in what we generally call hieroglyphic ; the second is in that character commonly called the " enchorial," or "the characters of the country ;" and the third, which is in Greek, declares, at the end, that the decree which this stone contains was cut in three different characters, the "sacred charactere," "those of the country" or the " enchorial," and the " Greek." In its present state the stone is much mutilated, chiefly at the top and at the right Bide. Its greatest length, in its present condition, is about three feet, measured on the flat surface which contain.. the writing ; its breadth, which in some parts is entire, is about two feet five inches. A large part of the hieroglyphic inscription is broken off, but it probably contained in its entire state about twenty or at the utmost twenty-one lines ; the enchorial or second inscription consists of thirty-two lines, but the beginning of the first fifteen lines are wanting, and the Greek text contained, when entire, fifty-four lines, but the end of it is at present mutilated. We learn from the Greek text that the Itueetta stone was erected in the reign of Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, and probably about se. 193. Epiphanes succeeded to the throne on the death of his
father Philopator, B.C. 205, when ho was a child only four or five years old. In this monument the acts done during the prince's minority are attributed to him, and he is commended for his piety, his liberality to the temples, his remission of the arrears of taxes and diminution of the imposts, his victories over the rebels, and his protection of the lands by dams against the inunaations of the Nile.
It appears to have been placed in a temple dedicated by ls"echo to the god Teuw, the setting sun. The Resetta stone was the key to the interpretation to the hieroglyphs, the first attempts of De Secy to decipher the demotic or enchorial having been followed by the more succeeaful results of Young and Champollion, in deciphering the hiero glyphic text. Lately a critical translation of the hieroglyphical portion has been made by M. Brugech.
A critical examination and restorations of the Greek text have been made by Ameilhon, Herne, Villuison, Drumann, Person, and Letronne. The enchorial text has been also published and translated by Young and Brugsch. As the inscriptions are paraphrases and not literal translations, and the hieroglyphical portion is much mutilated, it does not add a great deal to the hieroglyphical vocabulary. [111seoetvenics.] (Brugge'', II.,' Die 1nschrift von Rosette; fo. Berlin, 18L0; ' Inecriptio Rolettana; 4to, Berlin, 1951 ; Letronne, ' Inscription Grecs:pie de Rosette; 8vo, Perim, 1510.)