First, let's explain what it is. The Rosetta Stone is an actual stone tablet with writing on it in three languages. The top of the stone is written in Hieroglyphic (used by ancient Egyptians), the center of the stone is written in Demotic (the language used by Arabs — including modern Egyptians), and the text at the bottom is written in Greek.

The text itself was written by priests to honor Ptolemy III, the Egyptian pharaoh. The writings set forth a number of great deeds attributed to the pharaoh.

The significance of the stone cannot be overstated. Prior to the stone's discovery, the meaning of hieroglyphs had been lost, and with that loss, scholars had no way of reading ancient Egyptian texts. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone changed all that and in 1821, by using the Rosetta Stone and other inscriptions, the French classical scholar Jean-François Champollion developed the principles for deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphics.

So . . . How did it receive its moniker? The stone was discovered in 1799 by French troops not too far from Cairo, Egypt, in a small port city on the Mediterranean coast called Rosetta (in Arabic, Rashid).