The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone, by E. A. Wallis Budge, includes a section headed The Discovery of the Stone. The text describes the famous slab of black basalt which stands at the southern end of the Egyptian Gallery in the British Museum, and says it was found at a spot near the mouth of the great arm of the Nile. The text says the actual finder of the Stone was a French Officer of Engineers, whose name is sometimes spelt Boussard, and sometimes Bouchard.

The text says that when Napoleon heard of the Stone, he ordered it to be taken to Cairo and placed in the Institut National, which he had recently founded in that city. The text says that copies of the Stone were ordered for distribution among the scholars of Europe, and that two skilled lithographers, citizens Marcel and Galland, were specially brought to Cairo from Paris to make them. A numbered list in the text says that the first five days of the month of Thoth shall be days of festival for ever, with offerings made in the temples and all the people wearing garlands.