Jean-François Champollion

Jean-François Champollion (23 December 1790 – 4 March 1832) was a French classical scholar, philologist and orientalist.

Champollion deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs with the help of groundwork laid by his predecessors: Athanasius Kircher, Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Akerblad, Thomas Young, and William John Bankes. Champollion translated parts of the Rosetta Stone in 1822, showing that the written Egyptian language was similar to Coptic, and that the writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs.

Biography

Champollion was born at Figeac, Lot, in France, the last of seven children (two of whom had already died before he was born). He was raised in humble circumstances; his parents could not afford school for him, and he was eight years old before his older brother Jacques, who was living in Grenoble, began to teach him. This brother, although studious and largely self-educated, did not have Jean-François' genius for language; however, he was talented at earning a living, and supported Jean-François for most of his life.

He lived with his mother in Grenoble for several years, and even as a child showed an extraordinary linguistic talent. By the age of 16 he had mastered a dozen languages and had read a paper before the Grenoble Academy concerning the Coptic language. By 20 he could also speak Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Amharic, Sanskrit, Avestan, Pahlavi, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, Persian, Ethiopic, and Chinese in addition to his native French. In 1809, he became assistant-professor of History at Grenoble. His interest in oriental languages, especially Coptic, led to his being entrusted with the task of deciphering the writing on the then recently-discovered Rosetta Stone, and he spent the years 1822–1824 on this task. His 1824 work Précis du système hiéroglyphique gave birth to the entire field of modern Egyptology. He also identified the importance of the Turin King List, and dated the Dendera zodiac to the Roman period. His interest in Egyptology was originally inspired by Napoleon's Egyptian Campaigns 1798–1801. Champollion was subsequently made Professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France.

Egyptian hieroglyphs

Thomas Young was one of the first to attempt decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, basing his own work on the investigations of Swedish diplomat Åkerblad, who built up a demotic alphabet of 29 letters (15 turned out to be correct) and translated all personal names and other words in the Demotic part of the Rosetta Stone in 1802. Åkerblad however, wrongly believed that demotic was entirely phonetic or alphabetic. Young thought the same, and by 1814 he had completely translated the enchorial (which Champollion labelled Demotic as it called today) text of the Rosetta Stone (he had a list with 86 demotic words). Young then studied the hieroglyphic alphabet and made some progress but failed to recognise that demotic and hieroglyphic texts were paraphrases and not simple translations. In 1823 he published an Account of the Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphic Literature and Egyptian Antiquities. Some of Young's conclusions appeared in the famous article Egypt he wrote for the 1818 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

When the French linguist Jean-François Champollion in 1822 published his translation of the hieroglyphs and the key to the grammatical system, Young (and all others) praised this work. Young had indicated in a letter to Gurney that he wished to see Champollion acknowledge he had made use of Young's earlier work in assisting his eventual deciphering of hieroglyphics. Champollion was unwilling to share the credit even though initially Champollion had not recognised that hieroglyphics were phonetic. Young corrected him on this and Champollion attempted to have an early article withdrawn once he had realised his mistake. In the forthcoming schism, strongly motivated by the political tensions of that time, the British supported Young and the French Champollion. Champollion completely translated the hieroglyphic grammar based in part upon the earlier work of others including Young. However, Champollion maintained that he alone had deciphered the hieroglyphs. However, after 1826, he did offer Young access to demotic manuscripts in the Louvre, when he was a curator there.

Franco-Tuscan Expedition

In 1827 Ippolito Rosellini, considered the founder of Egyptology in Italy, went to Paris for a year in order to improve his knowledge of the method of decipherment proposed by Champollion. The two philologists decided to organize an expedition to Egypt to confirm the validity of the discovery. Headed by Champollion and assisted by Rosellini his first disciple and great friend, the mission was known as the Franco-Tuscan Expedition, and was made possible by the support of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, and the King of France, Charles X.

On the 21st of July 1828, with four members, they boarded the ship Eglé at Toulon and set sail for Egypt. They travelled upstream along the Nile and studied an exhaustive number of monuments and inscriptions. The expedition led to a posthumously-published extensive Monuments de l'Egypte et de la Nubie (1845). Unfortunately, Champollion's expedition was blemished by instances of unchecked looting. Most notably, while studying the Valley of the Kings, he irreparably damaged KV17, the tomb of Seti I, by physically removing two large wall sections with mirror-image scenes. The scenes are now in the collections of the Louvre and the museum of Florence.

Exhausted by his labours during and after his scientific expedition to Egypt, Champollion died of an apoplectic attack in Paris in 1832 at the age of 41. He is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Certain portions of Champollion's works were edited by his elder brother, Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac; Jacques Joseph's son, Aimé-Louis (1812–1894), wrote a biography of the two brothers.

In popular culture

Champollion was portrayed by Elliot Cowan in the 2005 BBC docudrama Egypt. Champollion was also prominently featured in an episode of Carl Sagan's television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.The History Channel's "Secrets of the Rosetta Stone" also featured Champollion's efforts. He is also featured as the first-person character-narrator who relates the story of his Egyptian journeys in Christian Jacq's historical fiction Champollion the Egyptian.

Works

• (1819). Annales des Lagides, ou chronologie des rois grecs d'Égypte successeurs d'Alexandre le Grand. ;
• (1822). Lettre à M. Dacier relative à l'alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques. ;
• (1823). Panthéon égyptien, collection des personnages mythologiques de l'ancienne Égypte, d'après les monuments (explanatory text to illustrations by Léon-Jean-Joseph Dubois ).
• (1824). Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens. ;
• (1826). Lettres à M. le Duc de Blacas d'Aulps. ;
• (1827). Notice descriptive des monuments égyptiens du musée Charles X. ;
• (1828). Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens ou Recherches sur les éléments premiers de cette écriture sacrée, sur leurs diverses combinaisons, et sur les rapports de ce système avec les autres méthodes graphiques égyptiennes. ;
• (1828-1829). Lettres écrites d'Égypte et de Nubie. ;
• (1836, posthumously). Grammaire égyptienne. ;
• (1841, posthumously). Dictionnaire égyptien en écriture hiéroglyphique. ;
• Others - Principes généraux de l'écriture sacrée, new edition with a preface by Christiane Ziegler, Institut d'Orient, 1984.

Musées Champollion

• A museum devoted to Jean-François Champollion was created in his birthplace at Figeac in Lot. It was inaugurated 19 December 1986 in the presence of President François Mitterrand and Jean Leclant, secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. After two years of building work and extension, the museum re-opened in 2007. Besides Champollion's life and discoveries, the museum also recounts the history of writing. The whole façade is covered in pictograms, from the original ideograms of the whole world.
• The "*Maison Champollion" at Vif in Isère, formerly the property of Jean-François's brother.

Notes

Further reading

• Allen, Don Cameron "The Predecessors of Champollion". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104 (5): 527–547.
• Adkins, Lesley; Adkins, Roy The Keys of Egypt: The Obsession to Decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0060194391.
• Meyerson, Daniel The Linguist and the Emperor: Napoleon and Champollion's Quest to Decipher the Rosetta Stone. Random House Trade. ISBN 0345448723.

External links

• Giants of Egyptology: Jean-François Champollion, 1790-1832
• Key words: unlocking lost languages
• BBC: Jean-François Champollion