Rosetta

Rosetta was founded in the 9th century on the western mouth of the Nile, on a site that had been settled far earlier, and grew as the port where river traffic met the sea. Its great period came under the Ottomans. As the harbours of Alexandria silted and declined, Rosetta became the main outlet for Egyptian grain, rice and cotton, and merchants from across the eastern Mediterranean built the tall houses of red and black brick that still stand — warehouses at ground level, living rooms above, wooden screens across the windows.

The town's name entered every language by accident. In July 1799, during the French occupation, soldiers strengthening a fort a few kilometres downstream uncovered a slab of dark stone carved with the same decree in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek script. Surrendered to the British in 1801 and in the British Museum from 1802, it gave Jean-François Champollion and others the key to reading ancient Egyptian. In 1807 a British expeditionary force that entered the town was defeated in its streets by Egyptian troops.

Decline followed swiftly. Muhammad Ali's Mahmoudiya Canal, completed in 1820, linked the Nile directly to Alexandria and returned the shipping trade there, leaving Rosetta a fishing and farming town. That stagnation preserved its architecture: dozens of Ottoman houses, mosques, mills and a hammam survived where a prosperous town would have rebuilt. Restoration campaigns from the later 20th century onwards have repaired many of them, and the town is valued today for the Ottoman townscape that stagnation preserved.

Rosetta's identity rests on two things: its brickwork and its river. The houses are the local pride, and their style — patterned red and black brick, projecting mashrabiya screens, painted ceilings and ranks of marble columns holding up the mosques — is particular to the town. Caretakers open them to visitors and explain them with a mixture of official history and family memory.

Life is that of a Delta town, ordered by prayer times, the market and the fishing day. Religious observance is visible and social; moulids, the festivals held at saints' shrines, draw crowds to the mosques and riverside tombs, and the shrine at Abu Mandur upstream is a place for outings as much as devotion. Hospitality is pressed firmly on the few foreigners who come, and refusing tea takes more effort than accepting it.

Rosetta has also acquired a role it did not choose. The stone named after the town has made the name a byword for decipherment and given it a share in the long Egyptian argument about antiquities held abroad; local people are well aware that the famous object is in London, and say so. Meanwhile the ordinary culture of the Delta continues around it — sung poetry at weddings, boats decorated for festivals, and the long evening sitting outside on the corniche.

Rosetta counted about 58,000 people at the 1996 census and has grown since, a town small enough to cross in a walk and dense enough to be busy all day. Work is divided between fishing in the river mouth and the nearby Mediterranean, farming the surrounding fields, rice milling and the small trades of a market town. Fishing boats moor along the corniche and put out into the sea across a shifting bar, which is dangerous in rough weather.

The countryside around is rice and citrus land, worked in the classic Delta way with small plots, canals and buffalo, and Rosetta's mills and cold stores handle the crop. Some residents commute to Alexandria, sixty-five kilometres west, or to the industrial and gas installations along the coast at Idku and Abu Qir. Others have taken jobs in the Gulf and send money back, a pattern visible in the newer concrete houses at the edges of the town.

The shoreline itself is a daily concern. The Rosetta promontory has been eroding for decades, since the Aswan High Dam held back the silt the river once carried, and defences have been built at the mouth; rising sea levels and the salting of farmland are discussed here as practical matters rather than distant forecasts. The rhythm of the day is early and slow, with the corniche filling after sunset.

Fish is the town's food, from the river, the lagoons and the sea: mullet, tilapia, sea bass, sole, shrimp and crab, bought at the landing stages and grilled over charcoal or fried, with tahini, rocket, lemon and bread. Sayadeya, fish baked over rice coloured and sweetened by long-cooked onions, is the set-piece dish of the whole coast. Fesikh, mullet salted and left to cure, is eaten at the spring holiday of Sham el-Nessim and is prepared by specialist shops.

The everyday meals are Delta meals. Ful medames, broad beans stewed slowly and dressed with oil and cumin, and taameya, the Egyptian falafel made from split broad beans, are the breakfast; koshary, rice, lentils and macaroni under fried onion and tomato sauce, is the cheap lunch; and molokhia, a green soup of jute leaves poured over rice, is cooked for Friday. Rice is the local crop and appears at nearly every meal, including roz me'ammar, baked with milk and cream.

Dairy comes from the buffalo herds: soft white gebna domiati, sharp aged mish and thick yoghurt. Feteer meshaltet, a flaky layered pastry, is baked in village ovens and eaten with honey, cheese or molasses. Dates, guava and citrus are sold from carts in season, and the drinks are strong sweet tea, hibiscus and sugarcane juice.