The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele that bears three copies of an edict that King Ptolemy V Epiphanes of the Ptolemaic dynasty issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC.
The discovery made by Champollion is hailed as one of the greatest "lightbulb" moments in history: On September 14, 1822, he completed the decipherment of the name Ramses in a hieroglyphic writing from the Abu Simbel temple complex, which Ramses II ("the Great") had constructed.
It took twenty-three years after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone for the hieroglyphic system to be deciphered, which is one indication of how challenging it was to do so. The primary reason is that academics had long believed that hieroglyphs were nothing more than ideograms, or signs that expressed thoughts.