Rosetta stone

Ro·set·ta stone  (r-zt)

n.

A basalt tablet bearing inscriptions in Greek and in Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic scripts that was discovered in 1799 near Rosetta, a town of northern Egypt in the Nile River delta, and provided the key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

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Rosetta stone

n

(Social Science / Archaeology) (Linguistics) a basalt slab discovered in 1799 at Rosetta, dating to the reign of Ptolemy V (196 bc) and carved with parallel inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic characters, and Greek, which provided the key to the decipherment of ancient Egyptian texts

Thesaurus

Noun

1.

Rosetta Stone - a part of an inscribed granite stela that was originally about six feet tall and was set up in 196 BC; the inscriptions in hieroglyphics and Demotic and Greek gave the first clues to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics

Translations

Rosetta stone

n → Stein m → von Rosette