One of the most famous artifacts in the British museum is a broken part of a stone slab called Rosetta Stone. It was discovered in 1799 in egypt by napoleon bonaparte's soldiers and seized by the British in 1801. A message is carved into the slab. The message itself is not important; it is simply a decree that states that the priests in memphis, egypt, temple supported king ptolemy v. What made it a major discovery was that it said the same thing in three different languages: egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic, and ancient greek. In 1801 no one knew how to read hieroglyphs but many scholars knew how to read ancient greek. Thus they were able to compare the greek to the hieroglyphs and by 1822 the french philologist jean francois champollion, building on the previous work of the English physicist thomas young and others, had deciphered many of the hieroglyphs, although learning continued for many more years. Based on the reading about the importance of human communication which statement best explains why so many people put in so many years of effort to understand a language that had been long dead?