The Story of Egypt’s Multilingual Amir Akhor Stone, 1800-1830s

The discovery of trilingual stones was crucial for the modern decipherment of hieroglyphs and other ancient Egyptian scripts. Although the Rosetta Stone is the most famous example, several other inscribed stones (stela, plural: stelae) also played a role in this scholarly venture. Vicissitudes of their discovery, the antiquities market, and scholarly rivalries meant, however, that they were not as readily available for study. Concentrating on the trilingual stela variously known as the Caristie Stone, Burton Tablet, and the Amir Akhor Stone, this article examines the history of its discovery, later reports on it, and its eventual acquisition by Europeans. In contrast to the Rosetta Stone, which the British seized for the British Museum after defeating the France’s Egyptian Expedition in 1801, the Amir Akhor Stone ended up in the Louvre Museum. As the 19 th century progressed, however, increased modern Egyptian appreciation of their pharaonic heritage meant that the Tanis Stone, discovered in 1866, was kept in Egypt.