Free levelled English reading practice. Read for meaning first, then use the full Speed Reading tool to time yourself and track your progress.
For centuries, scholars could see the beautiful symbols carved on ancient Egyptian monuments, but they could not fully read them. The breakthrough came through an object now known as the Rosetta Stone. French soldiers found the stone in Egypt in 1799 while working near the town of Rashid, which Europeans called Rosetta. The stone carries part of a decree issued in 196 BCE. What made it extraordinary was that essentially the same message appeared in three scripts: ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script and ancient Greek. Because scholars could already read Greek, they had a starting point for understanding the Egyptian writing. Several researchers studied the inscriptions. The English scholar Thomas Young made important progress, especially with royal names. The French scholar Jean-François Champollion went further by showing that hieroglyphs could represent sounds as well as ideas. In 1822, he announced a major breakthrough in deciphering the script. The Rosetta Stone did not provide a simple word-for-word key, but its parallel texts gave scholars crucial evidence. As knowledge of hieroglyphs grew, researchers could read inscriptions, religious texts and records that had been silent for many centuries. This transformed the study of ancient Egyptian history and culture. The stone is now held by the British Museum in London.
Comprehension questions
When was the Rosetta Stone found?
Why were the three scripts important?
Who made important early progress with royal names?
