[eli5] How were gerogliphs understood and what was Rosettas stone role in the process.

Question

[eli5] How were gerogliphs understood and what was Rosettas stone role in the process.

In: 2

Answer 1

The Rosetta Stone was an edict from the government about some policy changes. These policy changes were so important that they were written out in three different languages so that _everyone_ in the area could read and understand them.

Since we already understood one of the languages on the tablet and we knew that the other text said the exact same thing, it allowed us to start to decipher specific words in the unknown language. Once we had a minimal understanding, we could use that to look at _other_ documents and start piecing together new words using context clues.