WaPo’s Michael Dirda reviews Andrew Robertson’s Cracking the Egyptian Code, about the Rosetta Stone. But as usual, the content of the decree itself, written in hieroglyphics, demotic, and Greek—which allowed Champollion and others to decipher ancient Egyptian—is ignored. As Charles Adams points out, the stone announces a tax amnesty. If farmers, driven off their land by brutal taxes and the knout of the tax collector, will only return and farm again, all penalties will be lifted, taxes cut, and physical abuse ended. (Thanks to Robert Hiett)