The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone In James Cross Giblin 's Riddle of the Rosetta Stone, he narrates the journey that many scholars take to translate Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and Greek carvings on a stone that led to understanding the life and culture of ancient Egyptians. As Giblin introduces readers to various scholars and their attempts to decipher the Rosetta Stone, he highlights their confusions, failures, and ultimate success. In 1799 Napoleon 's soldiers had found the Stone. The stone was filled with birds, animals, and geometric shapes. Things that looked like a text full of words that they were yet not able to translate. At first, the Greek scholars had their theories completely wrong. "The Greek 's decided on their own that the symbols must be a kind of picture writing" (11). The Greek 's couldn 't help but add their own definition to the Hieroglyphs. In addition to this, a Greek writer named Horapollo had thought that the picture of what looked like a goose stood for son. He then thought that a carved picture of a rabbit meant open, because a rabbit 's eyes never close. Many copies of the stone were made, all of the French soldiers were determined to translate the hieroglyphs first. One of the soldiers, Sylvestre de Sacy had a few ideas. He believed that once he singled out the names he would be able to identify the meanings of some of the letters and hopefully translate other names and words of the demotic passage. The process of sorting out the