Rare tablet — second only to the Rosetta Stone — unearthed in Egypt. Take a look
When Napoleon’s army accidentally stumbled upon a large stone covered in ancient text in 1799 in Egypt, they could not have known that the artifact would go on to become one of the most important texts ever discovered.
Today, it’s known as the Rosetta Stone and it has become synonymous with deciphering ancient language.
But while the Rosetta Stone maintains a central place for those studying the ancient Egyptian language, it’s not the only text that helped researchers put the pieces together.
In 1866, in the ancient city of Tanis, archaeologists uncovered two stone tablets with decrees from King Ptolemy III Euergetes upon the death of his daughter It was meant to be sent out to Egypt’s major temples.
Now, a new copy has been discovered.
While working at the Tell el-Pharaeen archaeological site in Husseiniya, researchers uncovered a complete copy of the “Canopus Decree,” as the stone is known, according to a Sept. 9 Facebook post from the Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
The decree is dated to 283 B.C. and was ordered when senior priests gathered in the city of Canopus, according to the post.
The tablet itself is made of sandstone and is large, standing more than 4 feet tall, almost 3 feet wide and 1.5 feet thick, researchers said.
The top is adorned with a winged solar disk with two royal cobras wearing crowns, according to the post. Below, 30 lines of hieroglyphic text are engraved in the stone.
First complete copy of key text found in 150 years
Archaeologists said the discovery was the “most significant of its kind in more than 150 years” because this is the first complete copy of the decree discovered since the two in 1866.
Six copies have been found — two complete and three fragments — and they were written in three languages, just like the Rosetta Stone, according to the post.
Other copies of the decree have been considered second only to the Rosetta Stone in their importance for decoding ancient Egyptian, according to Britannica.
The same message in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek allowed researchers to decode the images as language, but the new discovery is a bit different.
This copy is written entirely in hieroglyphs, providing even more information for linguists to use to decode the ancient picture-based language, archaeologists said.
The decree describes the deeds of King Ptolemy III and his wife which are referred to as “beneficent gods,” according to the post.
“These include donations to Egyptian temples, maintaining internal peace, reducing taxes during periods of low Nile floods, increasing their veneration in temples, instituting a new priestly rank in their names, establishing a new religious festival on the day of the rising of the star Sirius, introducing the leap-year system by adding one day every four years dedicated to their cult, and deifying their daughter Berenice in Egyptian temples,” archaeologists said.
This decree also states the information should be translated into the other languages so it can be placed in the important temples.
The site where the tablet was found lies in the ancient Egyptian city of Imet on the eastern Nile delta, according to the post. The city was an important urban center where other temples, fancy residential buildings and dedications to the goddess Wadjet have been found.
El-Husseiniya is near the northern coast of Egypt, about a 120-mile drive northeast from Cairo.
This story was originally published September 10, 2025 at 8:47 AM with the headline "Rare tablet — second only to the Rosetta Stone — unearthed in Egypt. Take a look."
