Champollion and the Mystery of the Hieroglyphs – In 1822, This Gifted Man Deciphered the Writing of the Pharaohs.
An achievement after hundreds of years of scientific trial and error.
In science, some formulas pass to posterity after a brilliant discovery. There is that of Archimedes for his thrust (“Eureka!”) but also that of Jean-François Champollion who, while piercing the mystery of hieroglyphs on September 14, 1822, would have hastened to announce the news to his brother Jacques-Joseph in these terms: “I believe that I hold my business,” before fainting.
As France celebrates the bicentenary of this historical deciphering that changed our relationship with the world, as did the discovery of America, according to many historians, it is appropriate to put this feat into perspective.
At the beginning of the XIXth century, notably after the great expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte (1798-1801), Europe is in full Egyptomania. But if this ancient civilization does not cease to amaze, we knew much, neither in its chronology nor in its writing. This is due to the Roman Empire and the development of Christianity, which sought to erase all traces of the pagans.
But not only: even at the height of the civilization of ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs were not used daily, the people preferred the hieratic, a simplified and cursive form, a bit like if you were to compare today's handwriting and printing characters.
Then, in the land of the Pharaohs, hieratic gave way to demotic, and at the turn of the Christian era, Greek and Coptic became widespread. From the Greeks to the Romans, no one looked into these hermetic signs and drawings which seemed to be reserved for the domain of the cult. Only a handful of Arab scholars tried the adventure. Without success.
In Europe, it was not until the end of the Middle Ages and especially the Renaissance that intellectual circles became interested in them. There was no treaty, no grammar, and no dictionary. Some tried to count the ideograms, others interpreted them, but all failed. How then to link these 700 different hieroglyphs (in the classical period), whereas our alphabets, whether Latin, Greek, Arabic, or Hebrew, do not count more than 30?
It is a complex writing composed of ideographic, determinative, and phonetic signs. And each one is not read independently so it is necessary to look at the others around to find their meaning. Finally, some are read from left to right and others vice versa.
In this maelstrom, scholars make little or no progress in the 17th and 18th centuries. They probably lacked the essential: a multilingual document that would allow comparisons to be made and even a translation to be made. However, this exists in the form of a block of black granodiorite weighing 700 kilograms, unearthed by Napoleon's men during his campaign in Egypt in July 1799.
This famous Rosetta stone that the French had been stolen by the English, once it arrived in Europe, was widely copied, copied, molded, and stamped. A race to be the first to understand the hieroglyphs began: at the beginning of the 19th century, scientific competition already existed.
On the slab stand out three texts written in radically different languages: at the top (of which a great part is missing), hieroglyphs; in the center, demotic and below, Greek. It is a decree dating back to the reign of Ptolemy V, which dates from 196 B.C. and whose interest - tax laws - remains rather limited.
But for the first time, researchers had at their disposal a trilingual text which could, at last, give a glimpse of a transcription. This was far from obvious and it took them about twenty years to understand all the subtleties. The first to obtain results was the British Thomas Young (1773-1829), who deciphered the name Ptolemy in several places. But, as an enlightened scientist - he was a physician and a physicist - Young was soon limited in his work.
Where Champollion would make a difference was through a lifetime of work devoted to ancient languages.
The National Library of France devoted an exhibition to Champollion at the beginning of 2022 where some of the drawings, recopies, or notes that make up a corpus of nearly 88 volumes, or about a thousand pages, were revealed. Since the age of 20, the gifted young man has mastered the art of language perfectly - he understands Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, and especially Coptic, which is partly a derivative of ancient Egyptian.
It is not so much the Rosetta Stone as his fine knowledge of Coptic and the documents that he tirelessly collected throughout his life that will give Champollion a decisive advantage to lift an enigma of more than a millennium. That famous month of September 1822, after having announced the news to his brother, Champollion will hasten to describe his system by an official letter to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres dated September 22, 1822.
A few days later, he even went to the prestigious assembly to give the details of his work, which he completed with a succession of memoirs. A great entrance for this autodidact in the muffled world of academic sciences.
Undeniably, this revolutionary discovery will give Champollion a stature apart when he is only ... 30 years old. The gifted Frenchman was unaware that he had only ten years left to live, a period that he would spend perfecting his deciphering system, notably by going to Italy, first to Turin (1824), then to Rome and Naples (1825), where the most beautiful collections of inscriptions were to be found.
In retrospect, it is surprising to note that the one who pierced the mystery of hieroglyphs had perhaps never seen the original Rosetta Stone and had not (yet) set foot in Egypt!
This dream, he will realize it in August 1828, thanks to his Italian friendships since he embarks on a Franco-Tuscan mission that will last two years. Bonaparte had stopped at Philae and Champollion, for his part, decided to go further south, to the level of the second cataract. He did not stay forever in Cairo and stayed in Thebes or in Karnak to dedicate himself to temples where the inscriptions were more numerous.
Champollion deciphers everything he can on his way and returns to France in December 1829 where he assures that there is nothing to change in his deciphering system: “Our alphabet is good,” he writes. From this trip, Champollion returns exhausted but at the height of his glory. He had fulfilled his dream of treading the land of the pharaohs, and had a widely respected authority, especially since 1826, since he was the head of the Egyptian department of the Louvre.
Finally, Champollion, the model student who had received so much from his teachers, had one last mission: to transmit his knowledge. The university did not open its doors to him, but the Collège de France created a position for him. He gave his inaugural lecture on May 10, 1831, followed by a dozen lectures, but no more, since he died on March 4, 1832, at the age of 41. He left science in his will, Egyptology, which is not very common. For the one who had not lingered in Cairo, judging the monuments like those of the Giza plateau not rich enough in inscriptions, it is worth all the pyramids in the world.
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