Champollion, Jean-François

(1790-1832)

   Egyptologist

   one of the founders of the science of Egyptology, Jean-François Champollion was born in Figeac, in the Midi, and came to Paris in 1807 to study oriental languages at the collège de France. He had already begun the study of Egyptian, and especially Coptic, texts convinced that the Coptic language was a later form of ancient Egyptian. Champollion obtained a facsimile of the Rosetta stone, which previous scholars had already analyzed and which seemed to offer solutions to the problem of deciphering the hieroglyphics. It was this stone, along with the text taken from an obelisk found at Philae, Egypt, in 1821, that allowed Champollion to discover the relationship among hieratic, demotic, and hieroglyphic symbols in Egyptian script. In 1822, he reported his findings in his Lettre à M. Dacier relative à l'alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques, followed in 1824 by his Traité sur l'écriture démotique and his noted Précis du système hiéroglyphique. His discovery of the complex system (part phonogram, part ideogram) of ancient Egyptian script was indispensable in the eventual deciphering of the entire hieroglyphic code and the building of a complete vocabulary and grammar. In 1826, Champollion was named curator of the Department of Egyptology at the louvre. From 1828 to 1830, he led a scientific expedition in Egypt, followed by his publication of Monuments de l'Égypte et de la Nubie (1830). In 1831, a chair of Egyptology was created for him at the Collège de France. At the time of his death, Cham-pollion left an unfinished Grammaire égyptienne and Dictionnaire égyptien, which were later published by his brother in 1835 and 1843, respectively.