Fancy a bit of brainwork? Head off to the British Museum. Surrounded by all
that cool marble, you’re then in a fit state to ponder the Cracking Codes
exhibition, featuring the famous Rosetta Stone amid a cluster of other
intriguing examples of ancient scripts, solved and unsolved. The Rosetta Stone
is a broken lump of basalt, picked up by Napoleon’s souvenir hunters 200 years
ago. It may look dull but is, of course, the key that unlocked our understanding
of Egyptian hieroglyphs. And the master locksmith? Jean François
Champollion, with help from the English physicist Thomas Young used the Greek
inscription to translate the English scripts. Open until 16 January 2000. Entry
£4/£2.
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