Final answer:
The Rosetta Stone was discovered by Napoleon's army in 1799 near Rosetta. Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion were instrumental in deciphering the stone, unlocking the secrets of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and advancing the field of Egyptology.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Rosetta Stone was discovered by soldiers in Napoleon's army in 1799. The discovery took place while they were constructing a fort near the town of el-Rashid, commonly known as Rosetta. Following Napoleon's defeat, the Rosetta Stone became a possession of the British, as stipulated in the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801, which also included other antiquities found by the French.
The deciphering of the Rosetta Stone started with Thomas Young, an English physicist, who first deduced that the hieroglyphs included the name of Ptolemy by their phonetic symbols. The full decryption was completed by the French scholar Jean-François Champollion, who realized that hieroglyphs represented the sounds of the Egyptian language. This breakthrough laid the cornerstone for our understanding of ancient Egyptian language and culture.
The Rosetta Stone is not only a crucial artifact for the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics but also for the field of Egyptology in general. Before its decipherment, Egyptologists had only conjectures about the meanings of hieroglyphs. The knowledge derived from the Rosetta Stone has significantly advanced our comprehension of ancient Egyptian society.