Archaeologists unearth 2200 year old Ptolemaic stele in Egypt
Egypt, Local, 4/20/2004

A team of German and Egyptian archaeologists working in the Nile Delta has unearthed quite a remarkable stele dating 2200 years back to Ptolemaic Egypt which bears an identical inscription in three written languages like the famed Rosetta Stone, according to DPA.

Announcing the find Monday, University of Potsdam Chief Egyptologist Christian Tietze said the stone fragment was "quite remarkable and the most significant of its kind to be found in Egypt in 120 years."

The grey granite stone, 99 centimeters high and 84 centimeters wide, was found "purely by accident" at the German excavation site of the ruined city of Bubastis, a once important religious and political center 90 kilometers northeast of modern-day Cairo.

It shows a royal decree, written in ancient Greek, Domestic and Hieroglyphs, that mentions King Ptolemy III and historian Euergetes I along with the date 238 B.C.

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