Rosetta Stone Tea Towel, White

<p>The iconic Rosetta Stone features on this classic white tea towel.<br /><br /> The soldiers in Napoleon's army discovered the Rosetta Stone in 1799 while digging the foundations of an addition to a fort near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta). On Napoleon's defeat, the stone became the property of the British under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801) along with other antiquities that the French had found. Exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, the Rosetta Stone was the key to unlocking the mystery of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the knowledge of which was thought to have been lost forever. The importance of this to Egyptology is immense. Soon after the end of the fourth century AD, when hieroglyphs had gone out of use, the knowledge of how to read and write them disappeared. In the early years of the nineteenth century, some 1400 years later, scholars were able to use the Greek inscription on this stone as the key to decipher them.</p>

Exclusive to the British Museum, a white cotton tea towel inspired by the Rosetta Stone.

About the Rosetta Stone:

Soldiers in Napoleon’s army discovered the Rosetta Stone in 1799 while digging the foundations of an addition to a fort near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta). Exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, the Rosetta Stone was the key to unlocking the ability to read and translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Stone contains the same decree in three different scripts, and scholars were able to use the Greek and Egyptian Demotic sections to decipher the ancient hieroglyphs. The text contains a decree passed by priests in 196 BC to honour King Ptolemy V for his services to Egypt.

Bring a splash of history into your kitchen with this fun tea towel.