“It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?” — Voltaire, 1732
Two hundred years ago today — on September 27, 1822 — Jean-François Champollion announced that he had cracked the code of the Rosetta Stone.
Discovered in 1799 during Napoleon’s campaign of Egypt, the stone is a slab of granodiorite standing four feet tall by two feet wide and one foot thick, covered in writing.
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