1 Me: The British Museum is very cool. They have the actual Rosetta Stone here.
2 Me: The hieroglyphs and the Demotic script are amazing.
3 Me: Reminders that we, as humans, have a shared legacy of several thousand years of civilisation.
4 Me: I tried to figure out the rest of the inscriptions, but it was all Greek to me.

Seriously. The actual. Freaking. Rosetta Stone.

And it's sitting right there, in a glass cabinet, in a public building you can enter at no cost, 361 days of the year. (If you happen to be in London.)

The stone that Jean-François Champollion used to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs for the first time in modern history. The stone that shone a light on over 4000 years of human history that had been opaque and unknown.

Arguably, the single most important archaeological find, ever. There are other contenders, sure, but the Rosetta Stone is in the middle of the fray, beating them off with a very big stick. Carved out of granite, most likely.

The waves of history oozing off something like this are palpable.

I spent two days in the British Museum. And it wasn't enough. I didn't even get to see all of the exhibition rooms, let alone all of the items. There are many, many, many other incredibly cool and wondrous things in there.

But the freaking Rosetta Stone. Holy crap.

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2022-12-18 Rerun commentary: Yes, I'm actually sitting on the courtyard in front of the British Museum in these photos. During this "on the run from Death" storyline I had a vacation to England and used the opportunity to take some comic photos in a couple of places. Namely here at the British Museum, and at the Tower of London. Well, my wife took the photos. She's very patient.