Jean-François Champollion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the Champollion comet rendezvous spacecraft, see Champollion (spacecraft).
Jean-François Champollion (23 December 1790–4 March 1832) was a French classical scholar, philologist and orientalist, and is credited as the father of Egyptology.
Champollion deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the help of groundwork laid by his predecessors: Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Akerblad, Thomas Young and William 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.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
He was born at Figeac, Lot, in France, the last of seven children (two of whom were already dead before his birth). He lived 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, and Chinese in addition to his native French.<ref>Singh, Simon (2000). The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography. Anchor. ISBN 0385495323.</ref> 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. 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.
[edit] Egyptian hieroglyphs
Young was also one of the first who tried to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, and was himself based on the works by Akerblad who built up a demotic alphabet of 29 letters. But Akerblad believed that demotic was entirely phonetic or alphabetic and was wrong. Young felt that, and by 1814 he had completely translated the "enchorial" (demotic, in modern terms) text of the Rosetta Stone (he had a list with 86 demotic words), and then studied the hieroglyphic alphabet and make some good work 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 Champollion published his translation of the hieroglyphs, Young praised his work but also stated that Champollion had based his system on Young's articles and tried to have his part recognized. Champollion, however, was unwilling to share the credit. In the forthcoming schism, strongly motivated by the political tensions of that time, the British supported Young and the French Champollion. Champollion, whose complete understanding of the hieroglyphic grammar showed the mistakes made by Young, maintained that he had deciphered alone the hieroglyphs. However, after 1826, he did offer Young access to demotic manuscripts in the Louvre, when he was a curator there.
[edit] Franco-Tuscan expedition to Egypt
Ippolito Rosellini is consider the founder of Egyptology in Italy, in 1827 he went to Paris for a year in order to improve his knowledge pf the method of decipherment proposed by Champollion. The two philologist decide to organize an expedition to Egypt to confirm the validity of the discovery. Headed by Champollion, who was assisted by Rosellini his first disciple and great friend, the mission was know 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 21 of july 1828, with fourteen 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 and is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery. His elder brother, Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac edited certain of his works; Jacques Joseph's son, Aimé-Louis (1812–1894), wrote a biography of the two brothers.
[edit] Notes
<references/>
[edit] Further reading
- Allen, Don Cameron. "The Predecessors of Champollion", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 144, No. 5. (1960), pp. 527–547.
- Adkins, Lesley; Adkins, Roy. The Keys of Egypt: The Obsession to Decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000 (hardcover, ISBN 0060194391); 2001 (paperback, ISBN 0006531458).
[edit] External links
- How Champollion Deciphered the Rosetta Stone by Muriel Mirak Weissbach
- Jean-François Champollion at KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt
- Resources on Biblical Archaeology
- Key words: Unlocking lost languages "The Keys of Egypt" by Lesley and Roy Atkins, a book on Champollion is reviewed among others in this long Guardian/London Review of Books essay
- Jean-François Champollion at BBC Historyar:شامبليون
br:Jean-François Champollion bg:Жан-Франсоа Шамполион de:Jean-François Champollion es:Jean-François Champollion eo:Jean-François Champollion eu:Jean-François Champollion fr:Jean-François Champollion ko:장 프랑수아 샹폴리옹 io:Jean-François Champollion it:Jean-François Champollion he:ז'אן-פרנסואה שמפוליון ka:შამპოლიონი, ჟან-ფრანსუა nl:Jean-François Champollion ja:ジャン＝フランソワ・シャンポリオン no:Jean-François Champollion nn:Jean-François Champollion pl:Jean-François Champollion pt:Jean-François Champollion ro:Jean-François Champollion ru:Шампольон, Жан-Франсуа sk:Jean-François Champollion sl:Jean-François Champollion fi:Jean-François Champollion sv:Jean-François Champollion tr:Jean-François Champollion zh:商博良
