Everything about Jean-fran Ois Champollion totally explained
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 lived in
Grenoble for several years, and even as a child showed an extraordinary linguistic talent. By the age of 16 he'd 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
Akerblad, who built up a
demotic alphabet of 29 letters. Akerblad, however, believed that demotic was entirely phonetic or alphabetic. Young thought the same, and by
1814 he'd completely translated the enchorial (which Champollion labelled Demotic and is the universally accepted term for this script in modern terms) 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 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 alone had deciphered the hieroglyphs. However, after 1826, Champollion did offer Young access to demotic manuscripts in the
Louvre, where he was then curator.
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.
Works
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- 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.Further Information
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