discovered in 1799 it enabled linguists to decipher hieroglyphics
Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele, found in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King PtolemyÂ V. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic script and Demotic script, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. As the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, the Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Mesoamerican writing systems Maya writing first developed as only utilizing logograms, but later included the use of phonetic complements in order to differentiate between the semantic meanings of the logograms and for context that allows for syllabic spelling of words.[1]