In the summer of 1814, a man by the name of Thomas Young stayed in Worthing.

He travelled from his home in London by horse-drawn coach, a gruelling nine-hour journey.

Young, aged 41, was a respected physician and physicist who was fascinated by Egyptology.

His baggage was unloaded in South Street and he checked into one of the town's hotels or boarding houses.

At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Worthing was a fashionable health resort, where wealthy families stayed to enjoy the sea bathing and fresh air.

Young may have stayed at Warwick House or The Steyne Hotel. Perhaps he took a room in Bloss's boarding house in Bedford Row or Miss Hawkins' lodgings in Warwick Street.

He probably enjoyed a glass of brandy in the Sea House Hotel, New Inn or the Nelson Inn, before attending a show at the theatre in Ann Street.

Working by candlelight back in his room, Young intently studied a copy of ancient text transcribed from the Rosetta Stone, a slab of black basalt measuring 3ft 9in long and 2ft 4in wide.

The remarkable relic, dating back to 196BC, was discovered by the French in August 1799 at a place called Rosetta, about 35 miles northeast of Alexandria.

At the time, Napoleon was bidding to conquer the land of the Pharaohs and had sent a 35,000-strong expeditionary force to Africa.

But they were forced to surrender after the French fleet was destroyed by ships led by Horatio Nelson at the Battle of the Nile in Aboukir Bay.

The Rosetta Stone fell into English hands and almost 200 years later can still be seen at the British Museum in London.

Young was fascinated by the hieroglyphic inscriptions of ancient Egypt, which for centuries had defied translation.

The Egyptians began to form the script about 5,000 years ago and had continued to use it, with other scripts, for more than 3,500 years.

The Rosetta Stone was inscribed with two languages, Egyptian and Greek, in three writing styles, hieroglyphs, demotic script (a cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphics) and the Greek alphabet.

Comparing the styles, Young was able to make an historic breakthrough in understanding what the symbols meant. He managed to prove the elongated ovals, or cartouches, in the hieroglyphic section of the stone contained a royal name written phonetically, namely the great Egyptian king Ptolemy.

His work paved the way for other academics to fully unlock the secrets of the pyramids.

A French scholar by the name of Jean Francois Champollion took up where Young left off, correcting and enlarging Young's list of phonetic hieroglyphs and, after much frustration and heartache, finally managing to crack the whole code in 1822.

Rather than working together, Young and Champollion regarded each other as rivals, sparking bitter recriminations, with both claiming to be the original codecracker.

Young, who died in 1829, is today largely forgotten by the vast majority of people.

But without that visit to Worthing in 1814, we may still be looking at hieroglyphs in puzzled fashion and wondering what those remarkable symbols mean.

Simon Singh, author of The Code Book, said: "When Young heard about the Rosetta Stone, it became an irresistible challenge.

"In the summer of 1814 he set off on his annual holiday to Worthing, taking with him a copy of three inscriptions.

"Young's breakthrough came when he focused on a set of hieroglyphs surrounded by a loop, called a cartouche."