2. What is the best summary of this passage?
In July of 1799, over 200 years ago, French soldiers came upon a block of stone in the Egyptian town of el-Rashid, or Rosetta. The stone was inscribed with three translations of the same message from priests of Ptolemy V. The message itself, having to do with taxes on priests, is rather unimportant for us today. However, the Rosetta Stone, as it has come to be called, provided scholars with the key to translating Egyptian hieroglyphics. Two of the languages on the stone are Egyptian, one of them being hieroglyphics and the other being Demotic. The second language is Greek. Therefore, linguists familiar with Greek were able to roughly translate the meaning of the hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs were a formal writing system in Egypt that used picture symbols. Such writing is found in many of Egypt’s most famous structures, including the Great Pyramids. These symbols were able to be translated after the discovery and translation of the Rosetta Stone.



A. The Rosetta Stone, which made translating Egyptian hieroglyphs possible, was discovered over 200 years ago in el-Rashid, Egypt.
B. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone finally made possible the translation of many examples of hieroglyphs in places like the Great Pyramids of Egypt.
C. The message on the Rosetta Stone dates from the time of Ptolemy V and is a declaration of important tax information for priests near el-Rashid.
D. The Rosetta Stone was inscribed with a message in three languages, including Greek, making translation of Demotic and hieroglyphs possible.