Jean-Francois Champollion
The Egyptologist
Early Life
● Jean Francois Champollion was born in a southwestern town in France known as Figeac on December 22, 1790. ● From a very young age he showed a strong interest in learning foreign languages, and ended up being able to speak many of them fluently. ● In fact, at age 16 he had mastered six Oriental languages, along with Latin and Greek. ● But, the language that he was most interested in learning was the then undeciphered Ancient Egyptian after he saw a copy of the Rosetta Stone at age 12. ● So, after learning Coptic (a language that is related to the Ancient scripts of Egypt, and is spoken by Egyptian Christians known as Copts) he sent a letter to the Université de Grenoble stating wrongly that Coptic and Ancient Egyptian were the same.
The Rosetta Stone ● The Rosetta stone was a massive slab found in Egypt during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1799 ● It was a massive message from a king from the Ptolemaic period of Egypt known as Ptolemy V ● Consists of three languages. ● Ancient Greek (bottom) ● Demotic Ancient Egyptian (middle) ● Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs (top)
●
● ●
●
● ● ●
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Already, many scholars were competing to translate the Rosetta Stone, namely, the physicist Thomas Young along with other researchers like Athanasius Kircher, and Georg Zoega Young had already figured out how to write Ptolemy in Ancient Egyptian. So, Champollion, at age 32 figured out using his knowledge and an Egyptian obelisk how to write Cleopatra by translating any name written inside of a cartouche. Eventually, his friend Nicolas Hyot gave him a copy of the hieroglyphs from the Abu Simbel temple which Champollion used to translate the name, Ramses. After a while Champollion began to develop a deeper understanding of the meaning of the hieroglyphics. Specifically, in 1821 and 1822 he published a paper on how different types of hieroglyphs such as the phonograms and ideograms function. In the end, Champollion defeated his competitors in figuring out the meaning of all the hieroglyphs
Types of Hieroglyphs
.
●
Champollion, discovered from his research that hieroglyphs can take on different usage within a sentence, which fall into these categories.
1.
Ideogram: a type of hieroglyph that symbolizes an idea instead of having it’s own sound Determinative: a common usage of an ideogram in which more information about a word (e.g., if you write the word ra it means sun but of you write ra and then the symbol for god, you are writing about the sun god Ra) Phonogram: a hieroglyph whose meaning is a sound and not an idea Uniliteral/Alphabetic: a phonogram which only contains one letter worth of sound Biliteral: a phonogram that produces a syllable with two sounds Triliteral: a phonogram that produces a syllable with three sounds.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Late Career ● Champollion went on a massive trip to Egypt where he translated many different things to bring back to France. ● He then came back in 1826, to work as a curator at the Louvre. ● Here, he wrote many books. ● Eventually, in 1832 Champollion died, but his books were published after his death. ● Interestingly, Champollion was controversial because his discoveries showed that the Egyptian civilization existed during times in which the Church’s doctrine claimed to have had Noah’s flood. ● Overall, his legacy has allowed Egyptology to flourish for 250 years.
Books ● Primer of the Hieroglyphic System of the Ancient Egyptians ● Egyptian Pantheon; or, Collection of the Mythological Figures of Ancient Egypt” ● Lettre à M. Dacier ● The Code Breaker's Secret Diaries: The Perilous Expedition Through Plague-ridden Egypt to Uncover the Ancient Mysteries of the Hieroglyphs ● Egyptian Diaries: A Voyage to the Mysteries of Egypt ● Egyptian Diaries: How One Man Unveiled the Mysteries of the Nile
HOW TO READ HIEROGLYPHS! (1) .
(W
B N)
(R3) (ra)(god)
(M)
( KT)
HOW TO READ HIEROGLYPHS! (2) .
(W
B N)
(R )(r )(god) (M)
( KT)
Transliteration: Wbn R m kht Phonetic: Weben Ra em akhet Literal Translation: Rising Ra (sun god) in horizon.
HOW TO READ HIEROGLYPHS! (3) .
(W
B N)
(R )(r )(god) (M)
( KT)
Ra rises in the horizon.
