Rosetta Stone daguerreotype, 19th century. Daguerreotypes were one of the earliest forms of photography. The Rosetta Stone is an Ancient Egyptian artifact that was discovered in 1799, and dates from 196 BC. It was instrumental in advancing modern understanding of hieroglyphic writing because it contains three translations of a single passage, two in Egyptian language scripts and one in classical Greek. Many copies of the Rosetta Stone were made. This daguerreotype of one of those copies was produced in the period 1846 to 1852 by pioneering British photographer John Jabez Edwin Mayall (1813-1901).