(The). A stone found in 1799 by M. Boussard, a French
officer of engineers, in an excavation made at Fort St. Julien, near
Rosetta. It has an inscription in three different languages- the
hieroglyphic, the demotic, and the Greek. It was erected B.C. 195, in
honour of Ptolemy Epiphanes, because he remitted the dues of the
sacerdotal body. The great value of this stone is that it furnished the
key whereby the Egyptian hieroglyphics have been deciphered.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
