The Rosetta stone

Between 1799 and 1820 the French archaeologist Champollion was able to use a trilingual inscription found on a stone embedded half way up a mountain in what is now Iraq as a key to the correct interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics. The importance of this work is that it is an early indication that it is often productibe to treat language interpretation as a kind of puzzle. The more text you have to work with the easier this is going to be.