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What does the Rosetta Stone say? The decree in plain words

18 October 2026

The Rosetta Stone says thank you to a king. It is a decree passed by Egypt's priests, gathered at Memphis and dated 27 March 196 BC, in honour of Ptolemy V, a boy of about thirteen. The first half lists what he had done for the temples and the country. The second half lists what the priests gave him back: statues, a golden shrine, festivals, and copies of the decree in every major temple.

The same decree is written three times, in hieroglyphs, in demotic and in Greek. The quotations below come from Carol Andrews's translation of the Greek, published by the British Museum.

The priests met at Memphis for the king's feast

The decree takes its time over the date. It names the king with a long string of Egyptian titles turned into Greek: "lord of diadems", "a king like the Sun", and "Ptolemy, living for ever, beloved of Ptah". Then it gives the year by the priests of Alexander and of the royal cult, and finally the day: "the fourth of the month of Xandikos, according to the Egyptians the 18th Mekhir", in the ninth year of the reign.

Chief priests, prophets, sacred scribes and "all the other priests from the temples throughout the land" had come to Memphis for the feast of the king's taking up the kingship. Historians disagree on how the meeting fits the coronation itself. Older accounts, Budge's among them, put the crowning a year earlier and read the gathering as its first anniversary. Others date the crowning to the day before the decree. Memphis was the city of Ptah, the god named in his cartouche. The Greek calls him Hephaistos.

The decree lists what the king had done

The middle of the decree is a long run of clauses, each opening "whereas". Egypt had been through a revolt, and the boy king's ministers had spent heavily to win back the country and the goodwill of its temples. The clauses include:

taxes in Egypt partly cut, partly remitted altogether
debts owed to the crown cancelled
prisoners and the long accused freed of their charges
temple revenues in grain and money kept as before
priests spared the yearly journey to Alexandria
no more forced recruitment for the navy
two-thirds of the temples' linen tax remitted
rebels in Lycopolis besieged and the town taken by storm
gifts to the sacred bulls Apis and Mnevis

The king took rebel Lycopolis by storm

Rebels had held Lycopolis, a town in the Busirite nome of the Delta, stocked "with an abundant store of weapons". The king's army ringed it with mounds and trenches. When the Nile rose high in his eighth year, his men dammed the outlets of the channels to keep the flood off the plain, and then "in a short time he took the town by storm and destroyed all the impious men in it".

The rebel leaders from his father's time fared no better. The king went to Memphis, the decree says, "to avenge his father and his own kingship", and punished them there during the ceremonies of his coronation. The priests compare him to Horus, who avenged his father Osiris. The revolt in the south, around Thebes, dragged on for another decade, and the decree says nothing of it.

The priests granted the king statues and feasts

The second half begins "It was resolved by the priests of all the temples in the land". Every temple was to set up, in its most prominent place, an image of the king called "Ptolemy, the defender of Egypt", with the temple's chief god beside him handing him a weapon of victory. The priests would serve it three times a day, as they served the gods.

Each temple would also keep a statue of the king in a golden shrine, carried in procession with the gods' shrines at the great festivals and marked by the double crown he wore at his coronation. His birthday and his accession day became monthly feast days, and a five-day festival would start each year on the 1st of Thoth. Private people could keep the shrine at home.

The last clause orders the stone itself: the decree was to be inscribed "on a stela of hard stone" in "sacred", "native" and Greek characters and set up in the temples of the first, second and third rank. Sacred means hieroglyphs. Native means demotic. The Rosetta Stone is one of those copies, found in 1799 near Rashid in the Delta and in the British Museum since 1802.

See the stone and its cartouches

The short cartouche spells Ptolemy sound by sound

In the hieroglyphic lines the king's name sits in a cartouche. The short form spells ptwlmys, Ptolemaios, sound by sound:

stool: p
bread loaf: t
lasso: wꜣ, used here for the o
recumbent lion: l, the sign for l in foreign names
a sign of uncertain origin read jm: here m
two flowering reeds: the ai of Ptolemaios
folded cloth: s

Stool Bread loaf Lasso Recumbent lion Uncertain object Flowering reed Folded cloth

The longer cartouche calls him beloved of Ptah

Other cartouches on the stone add the same epithet the Greek gives, ꜥnḫ ḏt mrj Ptḥ (ankh djet meri Ptah), "living forever, beloved of Ptah". The ankh writes ꜥnḫ, "living". The cobra (ḏ) and the bread loaf (t) over a strip of land write ḏt, "forever". The stool, the bread loaf and the twisted wick spell Ptah, and the hoe writes mr, "love": beloved.

On the Rosetta Stone the god's name stands before the hoe, out of respect, though it is read after it. Spotting this ring among the broken signs gave the first decipherers their foothold.

Ankh Cobra Strip of land Twisted flax wick Hoe

How the stone was deciphered

The Greek version survives best

The hieroglyphs fared worst. Only 14 lines survive, all broken, and they match the last 28 of the 54 Greek lines: the end of the king's good deeds and the priests' resolutions. About as many hieroglyphic lines again are lost above them. The demotic has 32 lines, and the Greek has lost only the ends of its lower lines. Other copies of the decree, such as a stela from Damanhur now in Cairo and a version carved at Philae, fill most of the gaps.

The versions also speak to different readers. The Greek turns Ptah, Ra, Amun and Thoth into Hephaistos, the Sun, Zeus and Hermes.

Read Ptolemy V's cartouche

Questions

Does the Rosetta Stone mention Cleopatra?

No. Ptolemy V married Cleopatra I, the first queen of that name, two or three years after the decree. Later copies of priestly decrees from his reign add her to the honours.

Why is the Rosetta Stone in three scripts?

The decree itself orders it. Hieroglyphs were the script of temple monuments, demotic the everyday script of Egyptian, and Greek the language of the ruling court. So the stone holds two languages in three scripts.

Is the Rosetta Stone the only copy of the decree?

No. Fragments of other copies have been found in Egypt, and scholars use them to restore the missing parts. The Rosetta Stone is the best known because of its role in reading hieroglyphs.

What does the Rosetta Stone say in English, in one sentence?

Because King Ptolemy V has been generous to the temples and has restored order, the priests will honour him with statues, a shrine and festivals in every temple of Egypt.

Glossary

ankh: The sign of life, ꜥnḫ, a cross with a loop on top. Gods hold it out to kings in temple scenes.
cartouche: An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
demotic: A fast joined-up script that grew out of hieratic around 650 BC, used for everyday documents. It is the middle script on the Rosetta Stone.
epithet: A title or phrase added to a name, such as "beloved of Amun" after a king's name or "true of voice" after the name of someone who has died.
hieroglyphs: The picture signs of ancient Egyptian writing, used from about 3200 BC to AD 394. A sign can stand for sounds, for a whole word, or for the kind of thing a word means.
nome: One of the 42 provinces of ancient Egypt, each with its own capital, gods and governor.
priest: A servant of a god in a temple, who washed, dressed and fed the god's statue each day. A high priest led the staff of a great temple.
Rosetta Stone: A stone slab of 196 BC carrying one decree in hieroglyphs, demotic and Greek. It helped Jean-François Champollion decipher hieroglyphs in 1822.
scribe: A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
stela: An upright stone slab carved with words and pictures, set up in tombs and temples or to mark a border.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.