The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous archaeological finds in the world. At the time of its discovery in 1799, the importance this stone would have was unimaginable. Before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, little was known about Egyptian hieroglyphics or what they represented. The Rosetta Stone was crucial to our understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics and gave us a better understanding of ancient Egyptian culture. The Rosetta Stone was discovered in July 1799 in Rosetta (now el-Rashid) in Egypt (Cracking Codes 20). Pierre François Xavier Bouchard, a soldier in Napoleon's army, discovered the stone while digging the foundations of an addition to a fort (Cracking Codes 20). He recognized the stone as part of a stele or slab marking government notices or territory (Cracking Codes 20). Bouchard reported the discovery to a French general, Jacques-François Menou, who had the stone dug and cleaned (Cracking Codes 21). News of the discovery spread quickly, but no one could immediately decipher the writings (Cracking Codes 21). After Napoleon's defeat, the stone became the property of the British under the Treaty of Alexandria of 1801 (Cracking Codes 22). The Rosetta Stone is composed of black granite and quartz rock (Bierbrier 113), but it is commonly confused with black basalt, because it was treated with carnauba wax to protect it and white chalk was used to highlight the writings (Cracking Codes 23). The Rosetta Stone currently measures 112.3 centimeters in length, 75.7 centimeters in width, 28.4 centimeters in thickness and weighs approximately 1680 pounds (The British Museum Collection Online). On it, a decree in the name of King Ptolemy V appears in three scripts: the upper text is made up of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle text ...... middle of paper ...... deposited in British Museum since 1802 (Cracking Codes 8). In July 2003, Egypt demanded that the Rosetta Stone be returned to Cairo (Edwardes and Milner, 2003). The director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo said: "If the British want to be remembered, if they want to restore their reputation, they should volunteer to return the Rosetta Stone because it is the icon of our Egyptian identity. » (Edwardes and Milner 2003). As early as 2009, the British and Egyptians were in talks to lend the Rosetta Stone to the Grand Egyptian Museum for a short period (al-Atrush 2009). The term "Rosetta Stone" is now used idiomatically to represent crucial information during decoding. language. This colloquial usage is certainly correct; The Rosetta Stone played a key role in our understanding of hieroglyphics and without it we could never understand ancient Egyptian culture..