For hundreds of years, the ancient Egyptian writing system, known as hieroglyphs, was a complete mystery. Nobody knew how to read the pictures carved into the ancient temples and tombs.

That changed in 1799 when French soldiers in Egypt discovered a broken slab of black rock. This rock, called the Rosetta Stone, had the exact same message carved into it in three different scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic (the everyday Egyptian script), and Ancient Greek.

Because scholars could still read Ancient Greek, they were able to use it as a key to figure out what the hieroglyphs meant. This breakthrough finally allowed historians to understand the language and history of ancient Egypt!