What Does the Rosetta Stone Say?

QUESTION: What Does the Rosetta Stone Say?

ANSWER:

The Rosetta Stone is an example of a donation stele, which memorializes the grant of a tax exemption by the reigning Pharaoh to the resident priesthood. The Rosetta Stone records that Ptolemy V granted the exemption and gave a gift of silver and grain to the temples in the eighth year of his reign. It also describes how he dammed the Nile River one year for the benefit of the farmers and villages in exchange for the priesthood giving him a special birthday celebration annually thereafter. Finally, Ptolemy V asked the priesthood to serve him as an equal to the other gods.

What Are the Languages on the Rosetta Stone?
The Rosetta Stone was written in hieroglyphics (the “language of the gods”), demotic (the “language of the documents”), and Greek (the “language of the government”). A copy of the decree was supposed to be placed in every temple in Egypt. The Rosetta Stone is merely a portion of one of the decrees that survived.