ROSETTA STONE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Rosetta Stone

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/roʊzˈɛtə stoʊn/ Listen

Rosetta Stone

noun

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.

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Etymology of 'Rosetta Stone'

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"Rosetta Stone" Quotes from Famous Books

... the deciphering of the American hieroglyphics is a rather desperate enterprise, because we have no Rosetta stone with a bilingual inscription. I humbly beg to differ from that opinion; at least as regards the inscriptions on the walls of the monuments of Mayapan. In the first instance, the same language, with but ...

— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... the stone of Cashel, as Champollion studied the Rosetta stone, he might—or, rather, would inevitably—find meaning in those lines, and ...

— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... sidereal year. The risings of Sothis (Sirius) are recorded ("Decree of Canopus") in the later Ptolemaic times as they occurred in connection with the Egyptian year, changing one day every four solar years; and the Rosetta stone fixes the calendar. From the rising of Sothis we should obtain a date about 1598 B.C. as falling in the reign of Thothmes III; and from the coincidences of the new moon we should obtain 1574 B.C. as the thirty-fourth and 1585 ...

— Egyptian Literature

Words linked to "Rosetta Stone" : stela, stele