Rosetta (Rasheed) governorate locates 65km east of Alexandria. It offered the world the key to the Hieroglyphs - the Rosetta stone - which revealed the secrets of the great ancient Egyptian civilization.

History:
Rosetta was known as Khito, a hieroglyphic word meaning "the populace ", under king Menes reign. It was famed for military chariots manufacture in the XXVI Dynasty. Under king Minfitah, Rasheed powerfully resisted the Greek and Sicilian attacks. In the Coptic era, Rosetta was known as "Rasheet". Rosetta governorate’s National Day on September 19th marks the day when the lionhearted people of Rasheed conquered the British army.

Mosques of Rosetta:
All Rosetta’s mosques were built in the Turkish-Mameluke architectural style. They are characterized by their simplicity and the soft ornaments of the minarets, domes and facades.

Zaghloul Mosque, built in 1545, is Rosetta's oldest and largest mosque. It is named after Mameluke Zaghloul IX. From its minaret, the people of Rasheed were called to fight the British invaders. It has an area of 4,000 square meters and locates at the southern entrance to Rasheed.

Other famous mosques in Rosetta include Sidi Ali Al-Mahali, which was built in 1134 Hegira; & Al-Gendi mosque, which was built in honor of the memory of Prince Mohammed AL-Gendi in 1973.

Excavations:
Gold coins and earthen lamp stands were excavated in the peninsula of Abu Mandour; which was long ago called "the hill of happiness", despite the copious graves dug in its land.

The Antique’s Craft Institution:
In 1986, President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak inaugurated the Antique’s Craft Institution with 30 workers in the fields of carpentry and carpet weaving. The institution provides restoration necessaries.

Rosetta's National Museum:
Towards the middle of the 18th c., Hussein Arabi, Governor of Rasheed, established a 4-storey building.

The archives which locates at the first storey hosts transcripts of manuscripts belonging to the Ancient Egyptian Art Revival Center, while the second and third are designed to host 334 antiques, the most remarkable of which are the marbles, vessel holders and gravestones bearing inscriptions in Kufic writing.

The Central Park facing the museum has two gravestones dating to the Mameluke age.
Public Lavatories

Burg Rasheed Citadel:
The village of "Burg Rasheed" locates 7 kilometers away from Rosetta. The Mameluke Sultan Qayitbay built in it a citadel similar to that bearing his name which he built in Alexandria. Burg Rasheed citadel is however less in area and is architecturally simpler. It is surrounded by water from three sides. It was built for defensive purposes on a spot where the River Nile meets the Mediterranean sea. It hosts a large mosque.

In 1799, a stone bearing the name of Btolemy V was found inside the citadel. The stone is made of black basalt, is 3 feet high and 2 feet in width. The stone details the meeting of Memphis’ priests to crown Ptolemy V after he conferred money and crop upon temples, exempted the Egyptian people from half of the taxes and debts and declared amnesty for all prisoners as well.

The Rosetta Stone:
The Rosetta Stone is a stone with writing on it in two languages (Egyptian and Greek), using three scripts (hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek).

The first script, Hieroglyphic, was the script used for important or religious documents. The second was demotic, which was the common script of Egypt. The third was Greek, which was the language of the rulers of Egypt at that time.

The Rosetta Stone was written in all three scripts so that the priests, government officials and rulers of Egypt could read what it said.

The Rosetta Stone was carved in 196 B.C. & found in 1799, by French soldiers who were rebuilding a fort in Egypt. It was called the Rosetta Stone because it was discovered in a town called Rosetta (Rasheed).

The Rosetta Stone is a text written by a group of priests in Egypt to honor the Egyptian pharaoh. It lists all of the things that the pharaoh has done that are good for the priests and the people of Egypt.

Many people worked on deciphering hieroglyphs over several hundred years. However, the structure of the script was very difficult to work out. After many years of studying the Rosetta Stone and other examples of ancient Egyptian writing, Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822.
 
Champollion could read both Greek and Coptic. He was able to figure out what the seven demotic signs in coptic were. By looking at how these signs were used in Coptic he was able to work out what they stood for. Then he began tracing these demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs.
By working out what some hieroglyphs stood for, he could make educated guesses about what the other hieroglyphs stood for.

The deciphering of the hieroglyphs had then opened the door for understanding all the mysteries of the pharaohs!