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What matters about the Rosetta stone is not what it says but that it says it three times and in three different languages.
但在今天，石碑的重要性并不在于它的内容，而在于它将同样的内容用三种不同语言记录了三遍。
In Classical Greek, the language of the Greek rulers and the state administration, and then in two forms of Ancient Egyptian-the everyday writing of the people known as Demotic, and the priestly hieroglyphics which had for centuries baffled Europeans.
其一是官方的古希腊语，另两种则是古埃及语的两种形式，包括人们日常生活中使用的通俗文字，以及欧洲人数百年都无法破解的祭司使用的象形文字。
It was the Rosetta Stone that changed all that; and while the text of the stone itself is pretty unexciting, it dramatically opened up the entire world of Ancient Egypt.
是罗塞塔石碑改变了一切，它戏剧性地将整个古埃及世界展现在了学者眼前。
By the time of the Rosetta Stone, 196 BC, hieroglyphs were no longer in general use, they were used and understood only by the priests in the temples.
在罗塞塔石碑制作的时期，象形文字的使用已大幅减少，只有神庙里的祭司才会用。
Five hundred years later, even this restricted knowledge of how to read and write them had disappeared-the script of Ancient Egypt was lost.
五百年后，甚至再也没有任何人能阅读这种文字。
The Rosetta Stone survived unread through two thousand years of further foreign occupations-Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Muslim Arabs and Ottoman Turks, all had stretches of rule in Egypt.
在接下来两千年的异族统治时期，石碑虽然得以保存，但上面的内容始终没人看得懂。继希腊人之后，罗马人、拜占庭人、波斯人、阿拉伯穆斯林以及奥斯曼土耳其人都曾统治过埃及。
At some point the stone was moved from the temple at Sais in the Nile Delta, where we think it was first erected, to el-Rashid, or the town of Rosetta as we now know it, about 40 miles away.
其间石碑从尼罗河三角洲的舍易斯神庙转移到了四十英里外的拉希德，也就是如今的罗塞塔镇。
Then, in 1798, Napoleon arrived. The French invasion was not only military but intellectual.
一七九八年，拿破仑进入埃及。法国的入侵当然以军事目的为主（他们想切断英国通往印度的道路)，
With the French army came scholars.
但军队也带来了许多学者。
Soldiers re-building fortifications in Rosetta dug up the stone-and the scholars knew immediately that they had found something of great significance.
士兵们在塞塔重修防御工事时挖出了石碑，随行专家立刻断定这是件重要的文物。
