In July 1799 a French officer serving in Bonaparte's army in Egypt made an interesting discovery. A granite block unearthed near the small town of Rosetta bore texts in three different scripts - Greek, demotic Egyptian and hieroglyphs. For the first time there was real hope of decoding Egyptian writing. The Stone was soon stolen from the French by the British Army and removed to the British Museum in London. Now began a remarkable and highly competitive intellectual adventure in which some of the best minds of the time took part. Thomas Young, an Englishman, and Johann David Akerblad, a Swede, made valiant progress towards a solution, but the code was cracked by the tireless French orientalist François Champollion. The texts of Ancient Egypt could now be read again after fourteen centuries.

Author Biography: Robert Solé, whose origins are Egyptian, is a novelist and journalist. Dominique Valbelle is Director of the Institute of Egyptology at the University of Lille III and President of the French Egyptological Society.