The Rosetta decree remits the crown's debts

At Memphis in 196 BC a council of priests honoured the young Ptolemy V, on the first anniversary of his coronation, in a decree recording that, after revolts in the Delta, he had remitted debts and taxes owed to the crown, released prisoners, and let those who had sided against the government in the revolt return home and keep their property. It was cut in hieroglyphs, demotic and Greek, and the stone found in 1799 became the key to reading hieroglyphs.

The mechanism

RELEASE

How it was checked

• EvidenceT5 INDEPENDENT SECULAR; Status: ADDED 2026-09-19
• Letter eraTHE PROPHETS AND THE ROAD 776 BC to 4 BC
• SourcesRECORD — Britannica, 'Ptolemy V Epiphanes'; The Rosetta decree, trans. E. A. Wallis Budge (1905), Sacred Texts · checked 19 September: British Museum, collection record EA24, 'The Rosetta Stone' (inscription note and curator's comments); The Rosetta decree, trans. E. A. Wallis Budge (1905), Sacred Texts (read in a browser)