Hieroglyph
After the end of the Egyptian civilization in 30 BCE, people no longer knew how to read the hieroglyphs. When the French took over Egypt in 1798, French soldiers found a large stone. This is now called the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone had writing in three different languages: hieroglyphs, Ancient Greek and demotic (a simplified form of hieroglyphs). Jean François Champollion guessed that the writing on the stone was the same in three different languages. By using the Ancient Greek, he was able to work out the name of the ruler, Ptolemy V, in hieroglyphs. After many years of study, he was then able to work out how to read the other words.