"Let this decree be written (or copied)…And let it be inscribed upon a tablet of stone or copper (or brass?), in the writing of the House of Life (i.e. in hieroglyphics), and in the writing of books (i.e. Demotic), and in the writing of the Greeks…."

Those 46 words changed the course of history and they assured its future recovery after it was lost for two thousand years.

It was an electrifying moment for me to realize upon reading this proclamation that had "The Rosetta Stone" (one of only two stelae recovered) not survived, we would know nothing of the meaning of Egyptian history before the Ptolemies, except from Greek and Roman sources, nor would we know the meaning of hieroglyphics, the Egyptian language or the immense history and advanced science that has been revealed since its translation.

We would know nothing of their religion, their pantheon or the temple practices of the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. We would not know of Narmer, Aha or Menes, the legendary First Pharaoh, who died in the Nile River, carried away by a hippopotamus, snatched by his leg from his royal barge.

We would have known little of Akhenaton and his monotheistic worship of Aten, much less heard the names of Nefertiti, Tutankamen or the lineage of pharaohs before Alexander the Great and the Ptolemy dynasty. We would never have heard of Seti, Rameses I or Ramses the Great. All our history and culture would be different.

Mankind might have remained, as Graham Hancock puts it, "…a species with amnesia."