From Temple Wall to Museum Art

Written By Fabian Torres

Images By Johanna Foudy

The Rosetta Stone has been fascinating to me because it has archaeology, language,

power, and cultural legacy. It was found in modern times but it’s from ancient Egypt, this famous slab helped decipher hieroglyphs and with that it opened the civilization of pharaohs to modern studies. I chose to write about the Rosetta Stone because it demonstrates how an object can carry history, because it connects the past and present, Egypt and Europe, and helped people understand different writing systems.

The Rosetta Stone is a piece of a larger stele, it’s a inscribed stone slab dating to 196 BCE,

during the reign of the Ptolemaic ruler Ptolemy V Epiphanes in Egypt the material is granodiorite a type of dark hard igneous rock mined from Upper Egypt and created into what was likely a temple monument. Right now, the Rosetta Stone is on display at The British Museum. The dimensions of the monument are approximately 112.3 cm in height. 75.7 cm in width, and 28.4 cm in thickness. On its surface, it appears to have three parallel inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphs. It has Egyptian Demotic script in the middle, and an ancient Greek script at the bottom. All three sections contain the same message from a group of priests in Memphis that praises the king and lists his good deeds and religious importance.

Image Credit: Public Domain

The Rosetta Stone is important for many reasons. One of the main reasons it’s important

is because the same message was written in Greek, which people could understand. alongside because the text was written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek, people could compare the different versions and finally understand how to read hieroglyphs. Before the Rosetta Stone was found, no one had been able to read ancient Egyptian writing for hundreds of years. That’s why the Rosetta Stone became so important, it helped discover the meaning of the writing.

Also, the stone has a symbolic and cultural meaning; it signifies the power of literacy,

inscription, and cultural memory. The fact that it could be inscribed in three languages and

meant for temple display. This means that the monument was shown in a public religious

ceremony. It survived being broken and repurposed in the 15th-century fortress wall.

What I found most surprising is how an ordinary government message praising a king,

cutting taxes, and supporting his worship became one of the world’s most important clues for

understanding ancient civilization; that a document once meant for a local temple wall ended up becoming important to high school and college kids. It's very famous around the world. The Rosetta Stone shows us that an object’s true value can come from the unexpected roles it plays over time. It reminded me that history isn't only found in big monuments, but also in broken pieces, old writings, and things that get reused and found again. From a temple slab to building material, to a focus of study, and finally a museum treasure shows how the past can appear in surprising ways and help us understand human culture from all over the world.

Works Cited

“What Is the Rosetta Stone?” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2 Mar. 2025,

www.history.com/articles/what-is-the-rosetta-stone.

“15. The Rosetta Stone.” The Linda Hall Library, 12 June 2024,

www.lindahall.org/experience/digital-exhibitions/napoleon-and-the-scientific-expeditionto-egypt/15-the-rosetta-stone/.

Egypt Museum. “The Rosetta Stone.” Egypt Museum, 15 July 2025, egyptmuseum.com/the-rosetta-stone/.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Rosetta Stone | British Museum,

www.britishmuseum.org/blog/everything-you-ever-wanted-know-about-rosetta-stone.

Accessed 21 Oct. 2025.

YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hlh6d_-AP0. Accessed 20 Oct. 2025