Which museum in London houses the Rosetta Stone?

The British Museum in London houses the Rosetta Stone.

The stone is a granodiorite stela inscribed with the same decree in three scripts: Greek, Demotic, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was created in 196 BC during the reign of Ptolemy V and was discovered by French soldiers near the Egyptian town of Rashid, called Rosetta in English, in 1799.

Because scholars could read ancient Greek, the parallel text provided a crucial key for deciphering Egyptian scripts. Thomas Young made important advances, and Jean-François Champollion announced a major breakthrough in reading hieroglyphs in 1822. The stone has been at the British Museum since 1802, apart from temporary wartime evacuation.

The Rosetta Stone did not alone translate every Egyptian inscription, but it supplied the essential comparative evidence. The British Museum’s collection also includes Egyptian mummies, sculptures, and papyri, making it a major centre for studying ancient Egypt.