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About the original Rosetta Stone:
The Rosetta Stone was created in 196 BC and later discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta, a harbor on the Mediterranean coast. It was translated in 1822 by Jean-François Champollion. Comparative translation of the stone assisted in understanding many previously undecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing. The text of the Rosetta Stone is a decree from Ptolemy V, describing the repealing of various taxes and instructions to erect statues in temples.

The Stone is 114.4 centimeters high at its tallest point, 72.3 centimeters wide, and 27.9 centimeters thick (45.04 in. high, 28.5 in. wide, 10.9 in. thick). Weighing approximately 760 kg (1,676 pounds), it was originally thought to be granite or basalt but is currently described as granodiorite and is dark grey-bluish-pinkish in color.

After Napoleon's 1798 Campaign in Egypt, the French founded Institut de l'Egypte in Cairo, bringing many scientists and archaeologists to the region.

French Army engineer Captain Pierre-François Bouchard discovered the stone on July 15, 1799, while guiding construction work at Fort Julien near the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (now Rashid). The Napoleonic army was so awestruck by this unheralded spectacle that, according to a witness, "it halted of itself and, by one spontaneous impulse, grounded its arms." He understood that it was important and showed it to General Jacques de Menou. They sent it to the Institut de l'Égypte, where it arrived in August. The French language newspaper Courrier de l'Egypte announced the find in September.

After Napoleon returned to France in 1799, 167 scholars remained behind with French troops which held off British and Ottoman attacks. On March 1801, the British landed on Aboukir Bay and scholars carried the Stone from Cairo to Alexandria alongside the troops of de Menou.

After the surrender, a dispute arose over the fate of French archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt. De Menou refused to hand them over, claiming that they belonged to the Institute. British General John Hely-Hutchinson, 2nd Earl of Donoughmore refused to relieve the city until de Menou gave in. Newly arrived scholars Edward Daniel Clarke and William Richard Hamilton agreed to check the collections in Alexandria and found many artifacts that the French had not revealed.

When Hutchinson claimed all materials as a property of the British Crown, a French scholar Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, said to Clarke and Hamilton that they would rather burn all their discoveries, ominously referring to the burned Library of Alexandria. De Menou regarded the stone as his private property and hid it.

How exactly the Stone came to British hands is disputed. Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, who escorted the stone to Britain, claimed later that he had personally seized it from de Menou and carried it away on a gun carriage. Clarke stated in his memoirs that a French scholar and an officer had quietly given up the stone to him and his companions in a Cairo back street. French scholars departed later with only imprints and plaster casts of the stone.