It's long been the received wisdom locally that this fractured slab of granite is the collection's most looked-for exhibit, and it's certainly easier to get a clear view of the trade versions than it is of the original, which is screened daylong by visitors who not only go up unduly close - and would no doubt be fingering it, braille-wise, as they used to be able to, if it weren't cordoned off - but stay there for longer than they should, determined perhaps to make a standing start on a long since redundant decipherment. The number of them hints at a BM merchandising frenzy: for sale, and I may have miscounted, are a mug, a mouse-mat, a ceramic tile, a tie, a teacloth, a scarf, a T-shirt and two sizes of replica, all of them stamped with a presumably random excerpt from the Stone's inscriptions. In the shopping precinct that now clings to the skirts of the old Reading Room, a table is laid with portable derivatives of the Rosetta Stone. The Man who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris by Andrew Robinson. Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson.
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