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 is its most-visited single object, and a simple image of it has been the museum's best selling postcard for several decades. The Rosetta Stone was originally displayed at a slight angle from the horizontal, and rested within a metal cradle that was made for it, which involved shaving off very small portions of its sides to ensure that the cradle fitted securely. It originally had no protective covering, and it was found necessary by 1847 to place it in a protective frame, despite the presence of attendants to ensure that it was not touched by visitors. Since 2004, the conserved