ROSETTA, a town of Africa, in Egypt, is pleasantly situated on the west side of that branch of the Nile called by the ancients Bolbitiman, affirmed by Herodotus to have been formed by art; the town and castle being on the right hand as you enter the river. Any one who sees the hills about Rosetta would judge that they had been the ancient barriers of the sea, and conclude that the sea has not lost more ground than the space between the hills and the water.
Rosetta is esteemed one of the most pleasant places in Egypt. It is about two miles in length, and consists only of two or three streets. The country about it is most delightful and fertile, as is the whole Delta on the other side of the Nile, exhibiting the most pleasant prospect of gardens, orchards, and corn-fields, excellently cultivated. This place is also famous for having produced the celebrated monument which, interpreted by Dr Young, led to the discovery of hieroglyphical literature, and threw new light on a subject of great antiquity. It consists of a black basalt, fragmented, which the French troops had found when digging the foundation of Fort St Julian; and is inscribed, as far as it is entire, with the hieroglyphic or sacred, the demotic or enchorial, and the Hellenic or Greek character.
In the country to the north of Rosetta are delightful gardens, full of orange, lemon, and citron trees, and almost all sorts of fruits, with a variety of groves of palm-trees; and when the fields are green with rice, it adds greatly to the beauty of the country. It is about twenty-five miles north-east of Alexandria, and a hundred north-west of Cairo. Long. 30. 45. E. Lat. 31. 30. N.