3000 Francs CFA Pierre de Rosette

The Rosetta Stone entered European consciousness not through scholarship but through war — French soldiers discovered it in 1799 during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, and Britain seized it under the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801, where it has remained ever since. The text itself is a priestly decree from 196 BC, repeated in three scripts, which gave Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion the comparative material needed to crack hieroglyphics in the 1820s.

BEAC's issuance of commemorative gold coinage is primarily collector-driven; these pieces have no meaningful circulation history in the member states.