Which ancient civilization created the Rosetta Stone inscription?

Ptolemaic Egypt created the inscription on the Rosetta Stone.

The stone was produced in 196 BC during the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, a Greek-speaking ruler of Egypt’s Ptolemaic dynasty. It records a decree issued by priests at Memphis. The same decree appears in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic Egyptian, and Ancient Greek.

French soldiers discovered the stone near the town of Rashid, known in Europe as Rosetta, in 1799 during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. Because scholars could read Ancient Greek, the repeated content offered a crucial route toward understanding the Egyptian scripts. Jean-François Champollion announced a major breakthrough in deciphering hieroglyphs in 1822.

The Rosetta Stone did not translate every hieroglyph by itself, and scholars had already made important progress before Champollion. Its value came from combining a known language with two Egyptian writing systems. The stone is now held by the British Museum in London, where it remains one of the world’s most famous archaeological objects.