The Rosetta stone, of black basalt, bears three parallel texts which contain a decree by the Egyptian priesthood in honour of Ptolemy V Epiphanes. Issued at Memphis on 27 March 196 BC, the decree reflects the attempts by Ptolemy to conciliate the powerful native priesthood which had been giving him much trouble.
The purpose of the stone inscription was also to create an acceptable common ideology of power between Greek rulers and privileged Egyptians.
The most important aspect of the stone for modern scholars, however, is that the decree is set out in three forms of writing. These scripts are hieroglyphic Egyptian, the pictorial and elaborate script of ancient Egyptian inscriptions, a simplified, everyday Egyptian script called Demotic and the well known ancient Greek script.
This combination was of vital importance in the decipherment of ancient hieroglyphic Egyptian, achieved by Champollion in 1824, since the Greek version could be read, providing a key to the hieroglyphic text. Champollion began his decipherment with the royal names, which are distinguished in the hieroglyphic text by being enclosed in cartouches (oval rings).
