BBC Documentary Films

Just a block of stone. Yet on it lay the clue to breaking a code that baffled scholars for centuries: Egyptian hieroglyphs. 

This fragment was found at el-Rashid (Rosetta) in Egypt , hence its modern name: the Rosetta Stone. 

It was dug up in 1799 by French soldiers of Napoleon Bonaparte, who were enlarging a fort. 

After the British defeated the French, it was handed to the British Army who sent the Stone to the British Museum, where it's been since 1802 (apart from a few trips such as two years stored underground during the First World War).