British Museum

Keys to the Past by Kathleen Leppla

The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone

This is a key to history. On this stone there are three different languages. Those are Greek, Hieroglyphics, and demotic. Eventually the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphics went out of use in about the fourth century. However people were able to use the Greek writing on the stone to decipher the hieroglyphs. The Rosetta Stone was discovered by Napoleon and his army in 1799.  They had been digging a fort.  It eventually came to the British in the Treaty of Alexandria from the French.  The only time it has been moved since it has been on display was during WWII because they were afraid of intense bombing. They moved it underground and it stayed there for about two years.


The Lindow Man
The body of a man was discovered in 1984 in the Lindow Moss bog.  The people at the British Museum were able to examine him a little further and get more details about him.  Conditions in the bog meant that many of his internal organs were preserved. He is predicted to have died between 2 BC and 119 AD. His cause of death was being struck on the head by a heavy object. There was also a hit in the back which was caused they believe by someone's knee.  This shot broke a few ribs. This specific man is known as Lindow 2 because there have been three other sets of humans found in this bog as well.