History of great civilizations. Our last material about the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs, we ended with the fact that Jean-Francois Champollion Jr. was forced to leave Grenoble and, due to the persecution of the royalists, move to Paris. But he began to study hieroglyphs earlier. Back when, in 1808, a copy of the Rosetta Inscription fell into his hands. Plutarch wrote that the Egyptians had 25 letters. Guided by the names of kings and queens, he first found 12. In the demotic part of the text. Earlier this was done by Åkerblad. But only Champollion's alphabet was more accurate and more complete. Moreover, Champollion decided to “fill his hand” in writing demotic signs and began to keep his personal records in writing demotic alphabet. And he succeeded in this!
Four years earlier than Jung, he wrote that hieroglyphs also convey sounds. Then he found the third letter of the Egyptians - which he called hieratic, in his opinion, strictly alphabetical. True, he was mistaken in thinking that first there was demoticism, then hieraticism, and only then hieroglphics. In fact, everything was the other way around. But he did not understand this at once.
Finally, he counted the total number of hieroglyphs on the Rosetta stone and found that 1419 of them survived. And there are 486 Greek words on it. And there are only 166 different hieroglyphs, the rest are repeated several times. That is, it turns out about three characters for each Greek word. And this could only mean one thing: hieroglyphs did not convey complete words, but syllables and individual sounds!
And all this he already knew in 1821, when he moved to Paris. And here, working systematically and diligently, he decided to rewrite the name "Ptolemy" with hieratic signs, and then substitute hieroglyphs in their place. And - everything worked out! The inscriptions matched! That is, the hieroglyphs were essentially the same letters as the demotic letters!
Jung correctly identified the three characters in his name. Champollion found the meaning of seven. True, there was a problem in reading: the hieroglyphic inscription sounded like "Ptolmes", while the Greek one - "Ptolemayos". Where did some of the vowels go? Here Champollion quite correctly decided that the Egyptians missed vowels, although not all.
Then he was sent a copy of the text from the Egyptian obelisk, and he read the name "Cleopatra" on it. After that, there were already 12 signs in his dictionary, and then he made, and literally casually, another discovery - he announced two hieroglyphs at the end of the inscription as signs of the feminine gender … and so it turned out in the end!
However, all the names he read were the names of the Greeks. What if in ancient times, before the Greeks, there were some subtleties in the spelling of their own names? Therefore, he really wanted to read some ancient names, but for a long time he could not.
And on September 14, 1822, he came across copies of the inscriptions made in an ancient Egyptian temple. There were two very simple names in cartouches. One showed a circle, the letter "Ж" and "two paper clips", and in the other - an ibis, the letter "Ж" and one paper clip. The circle - of course, meant the sun - in Coptic - re. Ж and the bracket meant the word mise - "to give birth." One paper clip is the letter "c". It turns out - REMSS. And now it is enough to substitute vowels instead of gaps, and we will get the name Ramses. Although you can read both Ramossa and Rameses.
The second name was given just as easily: ibis is thovt in Coptic, and in Greek - that. And then we have mise again, which ultimately gives Thovtms or Totms, that is, it is none other than Thutmose (or Thutmose - we just do not know how exactly this word was pronounced by the Egyptians then).
The excitement that gripped Champollion, when he realized that he could now read any Egyptian inscriptions, was so great that he had a nervous fit: he ran into his brother's room, threw him the sheets of paper covered with writing, shouted "I have achieved!", After which fainted and lay unconscious … for several days!
Recovering from the shock, he writes the famous "Letter to Monsieur Dassier" - the secretary of the French Academy of Inscriptions and Fine Arts, in which he sets out the essence of his discovery, and on September 27 he makes a report on his reading of the hieroglyphs to the venerable scientists of France. So that everyone could check the correctness of his conclusions, tables with the alphabet and samples of inscriptions were distributed to those present. Now it is not a problem to make copies of any documents or tables in any quantity. And then all this had to be done manually, and Champollion himself, since the scribes did not know the hieroglyphs …
The funny thing is that Thomas Jung, who was quite by accident in Paris at that time, was also present at his lecture. After listening to the message, he said, not without bitterness:
- Champollion opened the doors of Egyptian writing with an English key.
It is clear that he wanted to emphasize that he also did a lot in this field. He just lacked the last step …
But, as an honest man, he then added:
- But the lock was so rusty that it took a truly skillful hand to turn the key in this lock!
This is how Champollion became famous. The Parisian aristocracy immediately began to sign their letters with hieroglyphs. Fashionable, what can you do ?! But the attacks of ill-wishers and envious people only intensified. Champollion was accused of being an enemy of the church and a dangerous revolutionary. And, of course, that he … simply stole his discovery.
But Champollion did not pay attention to all these attacks, but continued to work. Now it was necessary to compose a grammar of the ancient Egyptian language, to recognize its unknown hieroglyphs - and they were, and, finally, - the most important thing: to start reading not only the names, but also the texts themselves, written on stones and on papyrus!
Already in 1824 he published a large work "Sketch of the hieroglyphic system of the ancient Egyptians." He began to read small texts and made many discoveries about verb conjugation, the position of prepositions, and adjectives. The book was translated into many European languages, which made it possible to connect to the work of other scientists, clarifying various details of the discovery made by Champollion. But they did not beg for his meaning. On the contrary, it finally dawned on the public what an important discovery he had made.
And Champollion continued to make discoveries. In the Turin Museum, he found the most valuable for history "Turin Papyrus" with a list of the pharaohs, and he found it in the garbage that was going to be thrown into a landfill. Finally, the French Academy of Sciences sent him on an expedition to Egypt.
He spent a year and a half there, working sparing no effort. He copied the inscriptions on the walls of temples, went down to the tombs and worked there for hours by candlelight. It got to the point that he fainted from the stale air, but as soon as consciousness returned to him, he went to work again.
The collections he brought immediately ended up in the Louvre, and he himself was appointed their curator. He seemed to feel that he did not have long to live, and worked day and night, ignoring the advice of friends and doctors. And in fact, he did not have money for treatment. He spent all his salary on his research in the field of Egyptology.
As a result, what should have happened happened. On March 9, 1832, he died of heart paralysis, having fulfilled his duty as a scientist to the end! It is interesting that the handwritten heritage left to the descendants of Champollion numbers 20 volumes. But the grammar of the Egyptian language and the dictionary, and the description of Egyptian monuments - all this was published after his death by his older brother and other scholars. Moreover, only the dictionary of the ancient Egyptian language occupies five large volumes with a total volume of 3000 pages!
