The BBC radio programme In Our Time discussed the Rosetta Stone in Feb 2021. Three academic experts discuss the history of the stone and the efforts to decode the inscription. It's a very informative discussion.
> Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most famous museum objects in the world. It is a damaged, dark granite block on which you can faintly see three scripts engraved: Greek at the bottom, Demotic in the middle and Hieroglyphs at the top.
> Napoleon’s soldiers found it in a Mamluk fort at Rosetta on the Egyptian coast, and soon realised the Greek words could be used to unlock the hieroglyphs. It was another 20 years before [Jean-François] Champollion deciphered them, becoming the first to understand the hieroglyphs since they fell out of use 1500 years before and so opening up the written culture of ancient Egypt to the modern age.
The programme can be downloaded: The Rosetta Stone: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s2qd
Description:
> Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most famous museum objects in the world. It is a damaged, dark granite block on which you can faintly see three scripts engraved: Greek at the bottom, Demotic in the middle and Hieroglyphs at the top.
> Napoleon’s soldiers found it in a Mamluk fort at Rosetta on the Egyptian coast, and soon realised the Greek words could be used to unlock the hieroglyphs. It was another 20 years before [Jean-François] Champollion deciphered them, becoming the first to understand the hieroglyphs since they fell out of use 1500 years before and so opening up the written culture of ancient Egypt to the modern age.