We are speeding north out of Cairo, along fast, wide roads through a desert landscape and out into antiquity. After three hours, we reach Rashid, once known as Rosetta, a port city on the Nile delta, and enter Fort Julien, walking clockwise around its interior until we reach the first corner and the reason for our journey.
At this spot in 1799, a discovery was made that would shake the world. Among the rubble of the fort’s foundations, a dark slab of granite-like rock caught the eye of Pierre-François Bouchard, a lieutenant in Napoleon’s invading army. Bouchard had served under Nicolas-Jacques Conté, inventor of the pencil, and he quickly gleaned the significance of the lettering etched into the slab.
This 762kg chunk of granodiorite, recycled from elsewhere into use as a building block, was inscribed with a decree issued in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. Although the
