Rosetta of a Coptic toponym, "Trashit". "Rosetta" or "Rosette" was the name used by the French at the time of Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt and thus became eponymous of the Rosetta Stone (), which was found by French soldiers at the nearby Fort Julien in 1799. The site of Rosetta was inhabited throughout the history of Ancient Egypt, then known as "", a hieratic word meaning "the populace", under Menes reign. In the Ptolemaic era, the town was renamed to "Bolbitine" ("Bolbitinum, Bolbitinon", the name of one of the seven mouths of the Nile in Herodotus). In Christian Egypt, the
Rosetta Stone it was incorporated in the foundations of a fortress constructed by the Mameluke Sultan Qaitbay (c. 1416/18–1496) to defend the Bolbitine branch of the Nile at Rashid. There it lay for at least another three centuries until its rediscovery. Two other inscriptions containing the same Memphis decree have been found since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone: the Nubayrah Stele, and an inscription found at the Temple of Philae (on the Philae obelisk). Unlike the Rosetta Stone, the hieroglyphic texts of these other copies of the decree were relatively intact. The Rosetta Stone had been deciphered long before they were