The Rosetta Stone: A Quick Primer

No doubt about it, the dis­cov­ery of the Roset­ta Stone in 1799 ranks as one of the great­est archae­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies. One slab of stone deci­phered Egypt­ian hiero­glyphs and demys­ti­fied the his­to­ry of Ancient Egypt. Now, we had a win­dow into the real his­to­ry of Ancient Egypt, not the imag­ined one. The sto­ry behind the Roset­ta Stone gets nice­ly told here by Beth Har­ris (Direc­tor of Dig­i­tal Learn­ing at MoMA) and Steven Zuck­er (chair of His­to­ry of Art and Design at Pratt Insti­tute), as part of their series of Smarthis­to­ry videos. The British Muse­um, which hous­es the famous arti­fact, has more on the Roset­ta Stone.