Final answer:
The Rosetta Stone was crucial in deciphering hieroglyphics because it featured the same decree in ancient Greek, which scholars could read, and two ancient Egyptian scripts, hieroglyphic and demotic.
Step-by-step explanation:
The quest to understand the ancient Egyptian language and culture led scholars to analyze the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone in great detail. The breakthrough came when it was recognized that the three inscriptions were three translations of the same decree, which affirmed the royal cult of Ptolemy V. The scholars understood that since the inscriptions were meant to convey the same message, the Greek version, which they could read, could serve as a key to decipher the other two scripts: hieroglyphic and demotic.
Two pivotal figures in the decipherment process were Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion. Young was the first to identify the sounds of a royal name in hieroglyphs while Champollion realized that hieroglyphs recorded the sounds of the Egyptian language. Their combined efforts ultimately cracked the code of hieroglyphs, ushering in a new era in the field of Egyptology and changing our understanding of Egyptian history and society.