system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it true that without the Rosetta Stone we would've never been able to decipher hieroglyphics? Why?

I've heard the claim of "never", and I understand that it's very tough with a language that's lost and only used for sacred texts, but I find it hard to believe that it might have never happened if not for chance finding this single artifact.
gpt
The thing with hieroglyphs is that it is not a straightforward phonetic or symbolic writing, where each glyph represents a sound or a concept. Quote from wikipedia:

*Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that function like an alphabet; logographs, representing morphemes; and determinatives, which narrow down the meaning of logographic or phonetic words.*

We know this now, but early attempts to decipher the glyphs made the otherwise understandable mistake to assume every glyph equaled to a certain concept and/or sound. So while there was some success in translating the glyphs that actually represented that, without the rest they couldn't really make sense of the texts. This may not be a good simile, but imagine trying to translate a text and thinking the punctuation marks are words as well.

The reason why the Rosetta stone was so crucial is because it provided an accurately translated text that could be used as a reference to understand how the writing actually worked.