Global resource wars: The Rosetta Stone

A slab of black basalt which now sits in the British Museum contains a decree honoring the Egyptian king, Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The decree was written in three languages: Greek, hieroglyphics, and demotic (a simplified form of hieroglyphics). The black slab is known as the Rosetta Stone and became the key to understanding hieroglyphics because on this stone the ancient pictographs were seen for the first time side-by-side with other better understood languages.