The historic Rosetta Stone was discovered accidentally in July 1799 by a French military soldier named Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon Bonaparte's military campaign in Egypt. While soldiers were digging foundations to expand a fort near the town of Rashid (which Europeans called Rosetta) in the Nile Delta, they uncovered the heavy slab of granodiorite embedded within an ancient wall. Recognizing its potential historical importance due to its multi-language inscriptions, the artifact was preserved and later handed over to scholars.