The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone, first published in French in 1999, the bicentenary of the monument's discovery, is very generously written. Robert Sole, a well-known journalist, and Dominique Valbelle, a distinguished Egyptologist, present the history of the discovery and the scholarly attempts to fathom the texts. The translation by Steven Rendall reads well. After discovery, the French made every effort to hang on to the stone. Its importance was recognized from the moment of its discovery by Pierre Bouchard in 1799, who noted that three bands of text in different scripts were inscribed on its surface.