Ancient Greek helped scholars decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone.
The Rosetta Stone contains the same decree in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic Egyptian, and Ancient Greek. Because scholars could read the Greek version, it provided a key for comparing the unknown Egyptian scripts with a known language. The decree was issued in 196 BC during the reign of Ptolemy V.
Thomas Young made important advances in identifying signs and royal names, while Jean-François Champollion published a major breakthrough in 1822. Champollion showed that hieroglyphs could represent sounds as well as ideas, including the names of rulers. Coptic, a later form of the Egyptian language written mainly with Greek letters, also assisted Champollion’s linguistic work, but it was the parallel Greek text on the stone that supplied the direct decipherment key. The stone is now held by the British Museum.