Jean-François Champollion

Jean -François Champollion ( born December 23, 1790 in Figeac in the Lot département, † March 4, 1832 in Paris) was a French linguist. With the decipherment of the hieroglyphs on the first Rosetta stone he laid the foundation for the scientific study of dynastic Egypt.

Life

Training in eight languages

Jean -François Champollion was born the son of the bookseller Jacques Champollion. The turmoil of the French Revolution prevented a regular training. At 13 he began to learn various oriental languages ​​, and at 17 he successfully held a lecture on the similarities between the Coptic and hieroglyphics. In the self-study and with the help of a private teacher, he acquired another excellent language skills and mastered already 18 years old eight languages. Apart from a few trips to Italy and the large Egyptian expedition the researchers lived alternately in Paris and Grenoble.

In March 1801, he moved in with his brother Jacques -Joseph, later professor of Greek, to Grenoble, where he was still teaching privately in particular and developed a passion for Egypt. With him was at that time the whole of France interested by the returning Egyptian expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1802 he met the returning from Egypt and the Prefect of Isère appointed mathematician Joseph Fourier. This showed him parts of his Egyptian collection and woke with the statement that no one can read these characters, in Champollion lifelong pursuit of the decipherment of hieroglyphs.

From November 1804 to August 1807 Champollion visited the newly opened secondary school and pursued there, despite the strictly prescribed curriculum its own language studies. His health was not very robust. From a young age he was plagued by severe headaches, dry cough and shortness of breath. He was suffering from nervous exhaustion and often fainted. Constant reading at schummeriger lighting attacked his eyesight. Later, tuberculosis, gout, diabetes, kidney and liver damage were added. Nevertheless, the obsessed scholar overcame a tremendous amount of work and hardly ever allowed himself a rest.

He presented after graduation in August 1807 his essay the geographical description of Egypt before the conquest by Cambyses and was nominated for member of the Academy of Grenoble. From 1807 to 1809 he studied in Paris, where he expanded his already extensive language skills to Arabic, Persian and Coptic.

Rosetta Stone

In Paris, he also worked for the first time with the Rosetta stone and derived from this a demotic alphabet. The alphabet thus gained helped him to decipher and non- hieratic papyri, although he actually existing differences was not aware of at the time.

Champollion in Grenoble in 1810 was professor of ancient history in a divided position at the newly opened University. His work on the hieroglyphic was hampered in the following years mainly due to lack of materials, the turmoil of the readmission of France by the royalists and the thereby caused exile in Figeac March 1816 to October 1817.

Back in Grenoble, he took two schools and married in December 1818 Rosine Blanc. Fatigued by political intrigue and deprived of his offices, he traveled again to Paris in July 1821. Where he focused primarily on translations between Demotic, hieratic and hieroglyphs. For a long time had Champollion injustices and the envy of his colleagues endure, but his strong character never let him lose sight of the goal to decrypt the first ancient Egyptian characters.

Based on a quantitative analysis symbol of the Rosetta Stone, he realized that hieroglyphs could not only stand for words alone. Use the name cartridges for Ptolemy VIII, Cleopatra II and III. on an obelisk of William John Bankes, the Rosetta Stone, pictures of a temple in Abu Simbel and other papyri he discovered that some hieroglyphs stood for letters, for other combinations of letters for whole words, or that they were even context- determining.

In September 1822, he managed to set up a complete system for deciphering the hieroglyphs. On September 27, 1822 Frenchman asked the members of the Academy of Inscriptions and belles-lettres in Paris a part of his research on hieroglyphs. But as soon as the speaker had finished that day, most listening scientists fell on him. They accused him of plagiarism or doubted his translations simply to. He has published pieces of work in October 1822 ( letter to M. Dacier, the Permanent Secretary of the venerable institution, concerning the alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphics ) and a detailed explanation in April 1824 (summary of the system of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt ). Today posterity celebrates the so-called "Letter to Monsieur Dacier " a milestone in the development of Egyptology.

Travels

Looking for other Egyptian writings, he spent the time from June 1824 to March 1826 in Italy, especially in Turin. There he found and translated the " Royal Canon of Turin " - a very detailed listing of the Egyptian pharaohs dynasties. He held this translation a while secret, as she placed the era of the Church altogether.

From August 1828 to December 1829 led Champollion a Franco- Tuscan expedition to Egypt along the Nile to Wadi Halfa. Many materials of discovered are the only evidence of the temple often used at the time as a quarry.

On March 4, 1832 Jean -François Champollion died only 41 years old at a stroke. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Writings

• Lettres à M. le duc de Blacas d' Aulps. Firmin Didot, Paris 1824-26.