The man who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs. Great scientists

Insight into the history of Ancient Egypt for a long time hindered by the barrier of Egyptian writing. Scientists have long tried to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. They even had at their disposal the ancient manual “Hieroglyphics,” written in the 2nd century. n. e. a native of Upper Egypt, Horapollo, and since the time of Herodotus it was known that the Egyptians used three types of writing: hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic. However, all attempts to overcome the “Egyptian letter” with the help of the works of ancient authors remained in vain. Only much later did it become clear that Horapollo wrote his book without knowledge of the matter, although it contains some correct provisions. In the end, to early XIX century, all work on deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs came to a standstill, and one of the very authoritative scientists had to publicly admit that this was an insoluble problem.

But there was a man who had a different opinion: Jean Francois Champollion (1790–1832). Getting acquainted with his biography, it is difficult to escape the feeling that this brilliant French linguist came to our world only to give science the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Judge for yourself: at five years old, Champollion is without outside help learned to read and write, by the age of nine he independently mastered Latin and Greek, at eleven he read the Bible in Hebrew, at thirteen he began studying Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean and Coptic languages, at fifteen he began studying Persian and Sanskrit, and “ for fun” (as he wrote in a letter to his brother) - in Chinese. Despite all this, he studied poorly at school, and because of this, in 1801, his older brother took the boy to his place in Grenoble and took charge of his upbringing.

At the age of seventeen, Champollion became a member of the Academy in Grenoble, where, as an introductory lecture, he gave the introduction to his book “Egypt under the Pharaohs.” He became interested in Egypt at the age of seven. One day he came across a newspaper, from which he learned that in March 1799, a certain soldier from Napoleon’s expeditionary force found near Rosetta, a small Egyptian village in the Nile Delta, “a flat basalt stone the size of a desk board, on which were carved two Egyptian and one Greek inscription." The stone was transported to Cairo, where one of Napoleon's generals, a passionate amateur Hellenist, read the Greek inscription on the stone: in it, the Egyptian priests thanked Pharaoh Ptolemy I Epiphanes for the benefits he had rendered in the ninth year of his Reign (196 BC) temples. To glorify the king, the priests decided to erect his statues in all the sanctuaries of the country. In conclusion, they reported that in memory of this event, an inscription was carved on the memorial stone in “sacred, native and Hellenic letters.” The anonymous author of the newspaper article concluded his publication with the assumption that now “by comparison with Greek words it is possible to decipher the Egyptian text.”

This thought sank deeply into Champollion’s soul. The testimony of one of his teachers has been preserved that back in at a young age Champollion vowed to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs (“I’ll read them! In a few years, when I’m big!”). Be that as it may, Champollion has since carefully read everything that was written about Egypt before him. Ultimately, everything he studied, everything he did, everything he did was connected with the problems of Egyptology. He took up the Chinese language only to try to prove the relationship of this language with ancient Egyptian. And in the summer of 1807, Champollion compiled geographical map Egypt from the time of the pharaohs. He also became acquainted with a wealth of unpublished material, original Egyptian papyri from private collections, and a copy of the text of the Rosetta Stone. After the collapse of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt and the capitulation of Alexandria, the Rosette Stone itself ended up in the British Museum in London. But the French Egyptian Commission managed to make a copy of it in time, which was delivered to Paris.

The Rosetta Stone became the key to unraveling Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic writing. However, before the “era of Champollion,” only very few scientists managed to make progress in deciphering the texts carved on it. The main obstacle was the lack of understanding of the Egyptian writing system as a whole, so all individual successes did not give any “strategic” result. For example, the Englishman Thomas Young (1773–1829) was able to establish the sound meaning of the five hieroglyphic signs of the Rosetta Stone, but this did not bring science one iota closer to deciphering Egyptian writing. Only the genius of Champollion could solve this seemingly insoluble problem.

The scientist's path to the desired goal was not direct. Despite his fundamental scientific training and amazing intuition, Champollion had to continually run into dead ends, take the wrong path, turn back and again make his way to the truth. Of course, a big role was played by the fact that Champollion spoke a good dozen ancient languages, and thanks to his knowledge of Coptic, he could come closer than anyone else to understanding the very spirit of the language of the ancient Egyptians.

First of all, Champollion examined and completely rejected Horapollo's Hieroglyphics and all attempts at deciphering based on his concept. Horapollo argued that Egyptian hieroglyphs are not sound, but only semantic signs, signs-symbols. But Champollion, even before Jung’s discovery, came to the conclusion that among the hieroglyphs there were signs that convey sounds. Already in 1810, he expressed the opinion that the Egyptians could write foreign names with such phonetic signs. And in 1813, Champollion suggested that alphabetic characters were also used to convey suffixes and prefixes of the Egyptian language.

In 1820, Champollion correctly determined the sequence of types of Egyptian writing (hieroglyphics - hieratic - demotic). By this time, it had already been precisely established that in the latest type of writing - demotic - there are letter signs. On this basis, Champollion comes to the conviction that sound signs should also be sought among the earliest type of writing - hieroglyphs. He examines the royal name “Ptolemy” on the Rosetta Stone and identifies 7 hieroglyphic letters in it. Studying a copy of the hieroglyphic inscription on the obelisk, originating from the temple of Isis on the island of Philae, he reads the name of Queen Cleopatra. As a result, Champollion determined the sound meaning of five more hieroglyphs, and after reading the names of other Greco-Macedonian and Roman rulers of Egypt, he increased the hieroglyphic alphabet to nineteen characters.

An important question remained to be answered: perhaps only foreign names were transmitted in hieroglyphs-letters, in particular the names of the rulers of Egypt from the Ptolemaic dynasty, and real Egyptian words were written in a non-sound way? The answer to this question was found on September 14, 1822: on this day, Champollion managed to read the name “Ramesses” on a copy of a hieroglyphic inscription from the temple at Abu Simbel. Then the name of another pharaoh was read - “Thutmose”. Thus, Champollion proved that already in ancient times the Egyptians, along with symbolic hieroglyphic signs, used alphabetic signs.

On September 27, 1822, Champollion addressed members of the Academy of Inscriptions and Fine Letters with a report on the progress of deciphering Egyptian writing. He spoke about the method of his research and concluded that the Egyptians had a semi-alphabetic writing system, since they, like some other peoples of the East, did not use vowels in writing. And in 1824, Champollion published his main work, “Essay on the hieroglyphic system of the ancient Egyptians.” It became the cornerstone of modern Egyptology.

Champollion discovered the Egyptian writing system, establishing that its basis was the sound principle. He deciphered most of the hieroglyphs, established the relationship between hieroglyphic and hieratic writing and both of them with demotic, read and translated the first Egyptian texts, and compiled a dictionary and grammar of the ancient Egyptian language. In fact, he resurrected this dead language!

In July 1828, something truly happened historical event: a person came to Egypt for the first time, fluent in language ancient Egyptians. After many years of desk work, Champollion now had to verify in practice the correctness of his conclusions.

Having landed in Alexandria, the first thing Champollion did was “kiss the Egyptian soil, setting foot on it for the first time after many years of impatient waiting.” He then went to Rosetta and found the place where the Rosetta Stone was found to thank the Egyptian priests for that inscription of 196 BC. e., which played an extremely important role in deciphering hieroglyphs. From here the scientist traveled along the Nile to Cairo, where he finally saw the famous pyramids. “The contrast between the size of the building and the simplicity of the form, between the colossality of the material and the weakness of the person whose hands erected these gigantic creations defies description,” wrote Champollion. - When thinking about their age, one can say after the poet: “Their indestructible mass has tired time.” In the Saqqara necropolis, the scientist made a very significant discovery: his employee dug up a stone with a hieroglyphic inscription near one of the dilapidated pyramids, and Champollion read the royal name on it and identified it with the name of the last pharaoh of the 1st dynasty, Unis (Onnos), which was known from the work of the ancient historian Manetho. Half a century passed before the correctness of this conclusion of Champollion was confirmed.

However, Champollion did not study the pyramids in detail: he was looking for inscriptions. After visiting the ruins of Memphis, he went down the Nile. In Tell el-Amarna, he discovered and explored the remains of a temple (later the city of Akhetaten was discovered on this site), and in Dendera he saw the first surviving Egyptian temple.

This one of the largest Egyptian temples began to be built by the pharaohs of the XII dynasty, the most powerful rulers of the New Kingdom: Thutmose III and Ramesses II the Great. “I won’t even try to describe the deep impression that this large temple, and especially its portico, made on us,” wrote Champollion. - Of course, we could give its dimensions, but it is simply impossible to describe it in such a way that the reader has a correct idea of ​​it... This is the maximum possible combination of grace and greatness. We stayed there for two hours, being in great excitement, we walked around the halls, and in the pale light of the moon I tried to read the inscriptions carved on the walls.”

Until now, there was a belief that the temple in Dendera was dedicated to the goddess Isis, but Champollion was convinced that it was the temple of Hathor, the goddess of love. Moreover, it is not ancient at all. Mine real look it was acquired only under the Ptolemies, and was finally completed by the Romans.

From Dendera, Champollion headed to Luxor, where he explored the Temple of Amun at Karnak and identified the individual stages of its long construction. His attention was drawn to a giant obelisk covered with hieroglyphs. Who ordered it to be erected? The hieroglyphs enclosed in a cartouche frame answered this question: Hatshepsut, the legendary queen who ruled Egypt for more than twenty years. “These obelisks are made of solid granite from the southern quarries,” Champollion read the text carved on the surface of the stone. - Their tops are made of pure gold, the best that can be found in all foreign countries. They can be seen near the river from afar; the light of their rays fills both sides, and when the sun stands between them, it truly seems that it rises to the edge(?) of the sky... To gild them, I gave out gold, which was measured in sheffels, as if they were sacks of grain... Because I knew that Karnak is the heavenly border of the world."

Champollion was deeply shocked. He wrote to his friends in distant France: “I finally got to the palace, or rather, to the city of palaces - Karnak. There I saw all the luxury in which the pharaohs lived, everything that people were able to invent and create on a gigantic scale... Not a single people in the world, neither ancient nor modern, understood the art of architecture and did not realize it on such a grandiose scale as they did ancient Egyptians. Sometimes it seems that the ancient Egyptians thought in terms of people who were a hundred feet tall!”

Champollion crossed to the west bank of the Nile, visited the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the ruins of the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri. “Everything I saw delighted me,” wrote Champollion. “Although all these buildings on the left bank pale in comparison with the giant stone wonders that surrounded me on the right.”

Then the scientist continued his journey south, to the rapids of the Nile, visited Elephantine and Aswan, and visited the temple of Isis on the island of Philae. And everywhere he copied inscriptions, translated and interpreted them, made sketches, compared architectural styles and established differences between them, determined which era certain finds belonged to. He made discovery after discovery. “I can declare with full responsibility,” wrote Champollion, “that our knowledge of Ancient Egypt, especially its religion and art, will be significantly enriched as soon as the results of my expedition are published.”

Champollion spent a year and a half in Egypt and during this time he walked through the country from one end to another. The scientist did not spare himself, received sunstroke several times, and was twice carried unconscious from underground tombs. Under such stress, even the healing Egyptian climate could not cure him of tuberculosis. In December 1829, Champollion returned home and processed the results of the expedition. However, the scientist did not live to see the publication of his last works - “Egyptian Grammar” (1836) and “Egyptian Dictionary in Hieroglyphic Writing” (1841). He died on March 4, 1832 from apoplexy.

On this day:

• Birthdays
• 1909 Was born Arthur Dale Trendal- Australian art historian and archaeologist of antiquity, specialist in ancient Greek vase painters.

There were more than 5000 thousand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Only about 700-800 were used in writing. The proportions of use are approximately the same as in Chinese writing. But what do we know about this ancient writing system?

I will start with the official part of the historical interpretation of this process and that modern history generally knows about deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Penetration into the history of Ancient Egypt has long been hampered by the barrier of Egyptian writing. Scientists have long tried to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. They even had at their disposal the ancient manual “Hieroglyphics,” written in the 2nd century. n. e. a native of Upper Egypt, Horapollo, and since the time of Herodotus it was known that the Egyptians used three types of writing: hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic. However, all attempts to overcome the “Egyptian letter” with the help of the works of ancient authors remained in vain.

In the study of this writing and in the decipherment of hieroglyphs he achieved the most outstanding results (1790–1832)
became the key to unraveling Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic writing.

The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite slab found in 1799 in Egypt near the small city of Rosetta (now Rashid), near Alexandria, with three identical texts engraved on it, including two in the ancient Egyptian language - inscribed in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Egyptian demotic a script that is an abbreviated cursive script of the late Egyptian era, and one in ancient Greek. Ancient Greek was well known to linguists, and the comparison of the three texts served as the starting point for deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The text of the stone is an inscription of gratitude, which in 196 BC. e. Egyptian priests addressed Ptolemy V Epiphanes, another monarch from the Ptolemaic dynasty. The beginning of the text: “To the new king, who received the kingdom from his father”... During the Hellenistic period, many similar documents within the Greek ecumene were distributed in the form of bi- or trilinguistic texts, which subsequently served linguists well.
The stone was discovered on July 15, 1799 by the captain of the French troops in Egypt, Pierre-François Bouchard, during the construction of Fort Saint-Julien near Rosetta on the western branch of the Nile Delta during the campaign of Napoleon's army in Egypt.

Clickable

The main obstacle in deciphering was the lack of understanding of the Egyptian writing system as a whole, therefore all individual successes did not give any “strategic” result. For example, the Englishman Thomas Young (1773–1829) was able to establish the sound meaning of the five hieroglyphic signs of the Rosetta Stone, but this did not bring science one iota closer to deciphering Egyptian writing. Only Champollion could solve this seemingly insoluble problem.

First of all, Champollion examined and completely rejected Horapollo's Hieroglyphics and all attempts at deciphering based on his concept. Horapollo argued that Egyptian hieroglyphs are not sound, but only semantic signs, signs-symbols. But Champollion, even before Jung’s discovery, came to the conclusion that among the hieroglyphs there were signs that convey sounds. Already in 1810, he expressed the opinion that the Egyptians could write foreign names with such phonetic signs. And in 1813, Champollion suggested that alphabetic characters were also used to convey suffixes and prefixes of the Egyptian language.

He examines the royal name “Ptolemy” on the Rosetta Stone and identifies 7 hieroglyphic letters in it. Studying a copy of the hieroglyphic inscription on the obelisk, originating from the temple of Isis on the island of Philae, he reads the name of Queen Cleopatra. As a result, Champollion determined the sound meaning of five more hieroglyphs, and after reading the names of other Greco-Macedonian and Roman rulers of Egypt, he increased the hieroglyphic alphabet to nineteen characters.
He established in the course of his research and concluded that the Egyptians had a semi-alphabetic writing system, since they, like some other peoples of the East, did not use vowels in writing. And in 1824, Champollion published his main work, “Essay on the hieroglyphic system of the ancient Egyptians.” It became the cornerstone of modern Egyptology.

Look at these hieroglyphs and their phonemes:

Doesn't it seem strange to you that certain images are passed off as phonemes? It's not even a syllabary! Why is it so difficult to depict sounds? You can depict a simple symbol and associate a sound with it, as can be seen in other peoples and cultures. But in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs there are pictures, images.

You can look at the translation, decryption, and in my opinion, deep misconception or even nonsense of Egyptologists
And Egyptologists cannot take a single step away from this! After all, all this is based on the authority of Champollion himself!

Look at this. This is a whole series of meanings, figurative writing. You can probably even say that this is a universal language that any bearer of intelligence can understand. Then the conclusion is - are we reasonable that we still cannot read this? This is my opinion. And this is a doubt in the method, where everything is based on phonetic comparisons of the imagery of hieroglyphs from the beginning of the 19th century. I got it a long time ago. Only now I decided to express it in this article.

It is quite possible that something technical is being shown here

Probably only the lazy have not heard about these technical hieroglyphs under the ceiling in one of the Egyptian temples

There are symbols here that look similar to aircraft, and more than one type, probably.

Probably in me again once again stones will fly that I am talking nonsense and everything has long been translated. Or maybe the codebreakers were putting an owl on a globe, earning their living?
I don’t want to completely tilt everyone towards absolute forgery and misconceptions based on the works of Champollion. But it’s worth thinking about whether everything is once again as Egyptologists tell us. After all, Napoleon went to Egypt for a reason, and it is possible that the Rosetta Stone is a simple fake. Moreover, the quality and size of the inscriptions on it do not correspond to the size of the hieroglyphs of the early kingdoms of Ancient Egypt.

As an addition:

Decryption. Also a phonetic translation. Although it still has the same symbols, pictures, images

In the decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphs, the situation is the same:

But in reality, understanding these Mayan images is even more difficult than the ancient Egyptian ones

Phonetics of Aztec hieroglyphs

Jean Francois Champollion ( French name— Jean-François Champollion)
French Orientalist historian and linguist, founder of Egyptology. He was a member of the French Geographical Society. Thanks to his decipherment of the text of the Rosetta Stone on September 14, 1822, it became possible to read Egyptian hieroglyphs and further development Egyptology as a science. Jean-François Champollion was born in the city of Figeac in the province of Dauphiné (modern deperation of Lot) and was the youngest of seven children, two of whom died in infancy, before his birth. Interest in ancient history in the wake of increased attention to Ancient Egypt after Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign of 1798-1801, his brother, the archaeologist Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac, developed his career. Jean-François Champollion began early independent research, using the advice of Sylvester de Sacy.
While still a child, Champollion demonstrated a genius ability to learn languages. By the age of 16, he had learned 12 languages ​​and presented his scientific work“Egypt under the Pharaohs” (“L’Egypte sous les Pharaons”, published in 1811), in which he showed a thorough knowledge of the Coptic language. At the age of 20, he was fluent in French, Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Coptic, Zend, Pahlavi, Syriac, Aramaic, Farsi, Amharic, Sanskrit and Chinese. At the age of 19, on July 10, 1809, Champollion became a professor of history in Grenoble. Champollion's brother, Jacques-Joseph Figeac, was a zealous Bonapartist and, after Napoleon Bonaparte's return from the island of Elba, was appointed personal secretary Emperor. Entering Grenoble on March 7, 1815, Napoleon met with the Champollion brothers and became interested in the research of Jean-François. Despite the fact that Napoleon had to solve important military-political problems, he once again personally visited the young Egyptologist in the local library and continued the conversation about the languages ​​of the Ancient East.

Champollion lost the professorship he received in Grenoble after the Bourbon restoration in 1815 as a Bonapartist and opponent of the monarchy. Moreover, for his participation in the organization of the “Delphic Union” he was exiled for a year and a half. Deprived of the means to live in Grenoble, he moved to Paris in 1821. He actively took part in the search for the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, interest in which intensified after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone - a slab with an inscription of gratitude from the priests to Ptolemy V Epiphanes, dating back to 196 BC. e. For 10 years, he tried to determine the correspondence of the hieroglyphs to the modern Coptic language, derived from Egyptian, based on the research of the Swedish diplomat David Johan Åkerblat. Champollion was eventually able to read the hieroglyphs outlined in the cartouche for the names "Ptolemy" and "Cleopatra", but his further progress was hampered by the prevailing opinion that phonetic notation began to be used only in the Late Kingdom or Hellenistic period to represent Greek names. However, he soon came across cartouches with the names of the pharaohs Ramesses II and Thutmose III, who ruled in the New Kingdom. This allowed him to put forward the assumption that Egyptian hieroglyphs were primarily used not to designate words, but to designate consonant sounds and syllables. In his work “Lettre a Mr. Dacier relative a l’alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques” (“Letter to M. Dacier regarding the alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphs”) (1822) Champollion summed up his first research in the field of deciphering hieroglyphs, and the appearance of his next work “Précis du systeme hiérogl. d. anciens Egyptiens ou recherches sur les éliments de cette écriture” (“A short sketch of the hieroglyphic system of the ancient Egyptians or studies of the elements of this letter”) (1824) was the beginning of the existence of Egyptology. Champollion's work was actively supported and promoted by his teacher Sylvester de Sacy, permanent secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions, who himself had previously failed in his attempt to decipher the Rosetta Stone. Around the same time, Champollion systematized Egyptian mythology on the basis of new material obtained (“Panthеon еgyptien”) (“Egyptian Pantheon”), and also studied the collections of Italian museums, drawing the attention of the scientific community to the Turin royal papyrus (“Deux lettres a M. le duc de Blacas d'Aulps relatives au musée royal de Turin, formant une histoire chronologique des dynasties égyptiennes" (“Two letters to Mr. Duke Blacas d'Aulps regarding the Royal Museum of Turin, forming chronological history Egyptian dynasties"1826).


The Rosetta Stone, the texts of which were deciphered by J.-F. Champollion in 1829.

In 1826, Champollion was commissioned to organize the first museum specializing in Egyptian antiquities, and in 1831 he was awarded the first chair of Egyptology. In 1828-1829, together with the Italian linguist Ippolito Rosellini, he made his first expedition to Egypt and Nubia. During the expedition, he studied a huge number of ancient Egyptian monuments and inscriptions, and worked fruitfully on the collection and research of epigraphic and archaeological material. Giuseppe Acerbi, a scientist who worked as the Italian consul in Egypt at that time, provided invaluable assistance to the expedition. During a business trip to Egypt, Champollion finally undermined his poor health and died in Paris as a result of a stroke on March 4, 1832, without having time to systematize the results of his expedition, published after Champollion’s death in four volumes entitled "Monuments de l'Egypte et de la Nubie" ("Monuments of Egypt and Numibia") (1835-1845) and two volumes "Notices descriptives conformes aux manuscrits autographes rédigés sur les lieux par Champollion le jeunes" ("Explanatory notes on author's manuscripts written by Champollion the Younger in the places of expeditions") (1844). Champollion's main linguistic work, Grammaire Égyptienne (Egyptian Grammar), was also published after the author's death by order of the Minister of Public Education Guizot. Champollion is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. From the book by Peter Ehlebracht “The Tragedy of the Pyramids. 5000 years of looting of Egyptian tombs,” about the visit to Egypt in the fall of 1829 by the Darmstadt architect Friedrich Maximilian Hessemer, the following testimony from Hessemer is known: “I was very unlucky that I ended up in Thebes immediately after Champollion, since everything there had already been bought up! » “I respect Champollion’s learning in every possible way, but I must say that as a person he shows a character that can greatly harm him in the eyes of people! The tomb Belzoni found at Thebes was one of the best; at least it was completely preserved and was not damaged anywhere. Now, because of Champollion, the best things in it have been destroyed. Beautiful, life-size paintings lie broken on the ground. In order to cut out one image, they decided to sacrifice the other two. But it turned out to be impossible to cut the stone, and everything was ruined. Because of the vainglorious intention of transporting these amazing work to Paris they are now destroyed forever. However bad experience it turned out to be not enough. Anyone who has seen this tomb before cannot recognize it now. I was extremely indignant when I saw such sacrilege.” Hessemer told his patron, diplomat and collector August Kästner, founder of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, about what he saw. Museum dedicated to J.-F. Champollion, was created in the ancestral home of the Egyptologist's father in Figeac. It was inaugurated on December 19, 1986, in the presence of the President of the Republic, François Mitterrand, and the Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Ancient Letters and Letters, Jean Leclian. In 2007, the museum, after two years of repair and restoration work to expand its area, reopened. This is the only museum not only in France, but throughout Europe, dedicated to both Egyptology and the history of societies and writings of the world. The house-museum of J.-F. Champollion was created in the town of Vif (Isère department), in the former possession of the Egyptologist’s brother. Works: L`Egypte sous les Pharaons, v. 1-2, P., 1814; Grammaire égyptienne..., P., 1836; Monuments de l`Egypte et de la Nubie, v. -4, P., 1835-1845; in Russian translation - On the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet, Moscow, 1950. Literature: J.F. Champollion and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs: Collection of articles / Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences; Executive editor I.S. Katsnelson. - Moscow: Nauka, 1979. - 140 pages; Hartleben N., Champollion, sein Leben und sein Werk, Bd 1-2, V., 1906; Pourpoint M., Champollion et l`énigme égyptienne, P., 1963.

How Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs

When Jean Francois Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, he was 32 years old, 25 of which were spent studying the dead languages ​​of the East. He was born in 1790 in the small town of Figeac in the south of France. We have no reason to doubt the reliability of the information depicting him as a child prodigy. We have already talked about how he learned to read and write. At the age of 9 he was fluent in Greek and Latin, at 11 he read the Bible in the Hebrew original, which he compared with the Latin Vulgate and its Aramaic predecessor, at the age of 13 (at this time he was already studying in Grenoble and living with his older brother Jacques , professor of Greek literature), he begins to study Arabic, Chaldean, and then Coptic languages; at 15 he takes up Persian and studies the most complex texts himself ancient writing: Avestan, Pahlavi, Sanskrit, and “in order to disperse, and Chinese.” At the age of 17, he became a member of the academy in Grenoble and, as an introductory lecture, read there the preface to his book “Egypt in the reign of the pharaohs,” written based on Greek and biblical sources.

He first came into contact with Egypt when he was 7 years old. The brother, who intended to take part in Napoleon's expedition, but did not have the necessary patronage, spoke of Egypt as a fairy-tale country. Two years later, the boy accidentally came across the Egyptian Courier - exactly the issue that reported the discovery of the Rosetta Plate. Two years later, he comes to look at the Egyptological collection of the prefect of the Iser department, Fourier, who was with Napoleon in Egypt and, among other things, served as secretary of the Egyptian Institute in Cairo. Champollion attracted the attention of the scientist when Fourier once again inspected their school; the prefect invited the boy to his place and literally enchanted him with his collections. “What does this inscription mean? And on this papyrus? Fourier turned his head. "Nobody can read this." “And I’ll read it! In a few years, when I grow up!” This is not a later invention; Fourier recorded the boy's words as a curiosity long before Champollion actually deciphered the hieroglyphs.

From Grenoble, Champollion leaves for Paris, which he considers only as “an intermediate station on the way to Egypt.” Mister de Sacy is surprised by his plans and admired by his abilities. The young man knows Egypt and speaks Arabic so much that the native Egyptians take him for a compatriot. The traveler Somini de Manincourt does not believe that he has never been there. Champollion studies, lives in incredible poverty, goes hungry and does not accept invitations to dinner, since he has only one pair of shoes with holes. Need and the fear of becoming a soldier force him to eventually return to Grenoble - “alas, as poor as a poet!”

He gets a place at the school where his classmates are still studying, and teaches them history. At the same time, he is working on the history of Egypt (based on Greek, Roman and biblical sources) and a Coptic dictionary (“he is getting fatter every day,” writes Champollion, reaching the thousandth page, “but his creator is doing the opposite”). Since he cannot survive on his salary, he also writes plays for local amateurs. And like a staunch republican in 1789, he composes satirical couplets ridiculing the monarchy, they are directed against Napoleon, but after the Battle of Waterloo they are sung, meaning the Bourbons. When Napoleon returned from Helena for 100 days, Champollion believed his promises of liberal rule without wars. He is even introduced to Bonaparte - Jean's brother François is a zealous supporter of the old-new emperor - and he, on a campaign whose goal is to regain the throne, finds time to talk with him about his plans regarding Egypt. This conversation, as well as the “anti-Bourbon” couplets, is enough for envious colleagues from the Academy to put Champollion on trial, which, at a time when “the verdicts were falling like manna from heaven,” declares him a traitor and dooms him to exile...

Champollion returns to his native Figeac and finds the strength to prepare for a decisive attack on the secret of hieroglyphs. First of all, he studied everything that had been written about hieroglyphs in Egypt itself over the past two thousand years. Thus equipped, but not constrained in his actions, he began the actual study of Egyptian writing and, unlike other scholars, began with demotic, that is, folk, writing, which he considered the simplest and at the same time the most ancient, believing that the complex develops from simple. But here he was wrong; in relation to Egyptian writing, the situation was just the opposite. For many months he moved in a strictly planned direction. When he was convinced that he had reached a dead end, he started all over again. “This opportunity has been tried, exhausted and rejected. There is no need to return to her anymore. And this also has its significance.”

Egyptian hieroglyphs. The names - Ptolemy and Cleopatra - served as the starting point for deciphering Champollion

So Champollion “tried, exhausted and rejected” Horapollon, and at the same time the false views of the entire scientific world. From Plutarch I learned that there are 25 characters in demotic writing, and began to look for them. But even before that, he came to the conclusion that they must represent sounds (that is, that Egyptian writing is not pictorial) and that this also applies to hieroglyphs. “If they were unable to express sounds, there could not be the names of kings on the Rosetta Plate.” And he took those of the royal names, “which, apparently, should have sounded the same as in Greek,” as the starting point.

Meanwhile, acting in a similar way, that is, comparing Greek and Egyptian names kings, other scientists also came to some results: the Swede Okerblad, the Dane Zoega and the Frenchman de Sacy. The Englishman Thomas Young advanced further than others - he established the meaning of five signs! In addition, he discovered two special signs that are not letters, but indicate the beginning and end of proper names, thereby answering the question that puzzled de Sacy: why do names in demotic texts begin with the same “letters”? Jung confirmed the previously expressed assumption that in Egyptian writing, with the exception of proper names, vowels are omitted. However, none of these scientists was confident in the results of their work, and Jung even renounced his positions in 1819.

At the first stage, Champollion deciphered some signs of the Rosetta tablet by comparison with the text of some papyrus. He took this first step in August 1808. But only 14 years later he was able to present irrefutable evidence to the scientific world, they are contained in the “Letter to M. Dacier regarding the alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphs,” written in September 1822, and were later given in a lecture given at the Paris Academy. Its content is an explanation of the decryption method.

There are a total of 486 Greek words and 1,419 hieroglyphic characters preserved on the Rosetta Plate. This means that for each word there are an average of three characters, that is, that hieroglyphic characters do not express complete concepts - in other words, hieroglyphs are not pictorial writing. Many of these 1419 characters are also repeated. In total, there were 166 different signs on the slab. Consequently, in hieroglyphic writing, signs express not only sounds, but also entire syllables. Therefore, the Egyptian letter is sound-syllabic. The Egyptians enclosed the names of kings in a special oval frame, a cartouche. On the Rosetta tablet and the Philae obelisk there is a cartouche containing, as the Greek text proves, the name Ptolemaios (in the Egyptian form Ptolmees). It is enough to compare this cartouche with another containing the name Kleopatra. The first, third and fourth characters in the name Ptolemaios are the same as the fifth, fourth and second characters in the name Kleopatra. So, ten signs are already known, the meaning of which is indisputable. With their help, you can read other proper names: Alexander, Berenike, Caesar. The following signs are unraveled. It becomes possible to read titles and other words. It is therefore possible to compose an entire hieroglyphic alphabet. As a result of this kind of decoding, a relationship is established between hieroglyphic writing and demotic, as well as between the two of them and the even more mysterious third, hieratic (priestly), which was used only in temple books. After this, of course, it is possible to compose an alphabet of demotic and hieratic writing. And Greek bilinguals will help translate Egyptian texts...

Champollion did all this - a colossal amount of work, which would have been a problem for scientists working with electronic counting devices. In 1828, he managed to see with his own eyes the land on the banks of the Nile, which he had dreamed of since childhood. He got there as the leader of an expedition that had two ships at its disposal, although he still remained a “traitor” who never received an amnesty. For a year and a half, Champollion examined all the main monuments of the pharaonic empire and was the first to correctly identify - from inscriptions and architectural style- many of them are old. But even the healthy climate of Egypt did not cure his tuberculosis, which he contracted in student years, living in a cold apartment and suffering poverty in Paris. Upon the return of this most famous scientist of his time, the pride of France, there were no funds for treatment and enhanced nutrition. He died on March 4, 1832 at the age of 42, leaving behind not only the glory of the scientist who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs and the author of the first grammar and dictionary of the ancient Egyptian language, but also the glory of the founder of a new science - Egyptology.

Teacher Grotefend's "knowingly lost" bet

Unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs, the old Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform was forgotten already in classical antiquity. Herodotus, for example, also includes in his work a “translation” of the hieroglyphic inscription on Great Pyramid, which contained information about the costs of its construction, but from his trip to Mesopotamia he returns only with the news that “Assyrian writings exist” (assyria gramata). However, cuneiform played a much more significant role in ancient times than hieroglyphs.

This was the most common type of writing in the Middle East. It was used from the eastern coast of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas to the Persian Gulf for three millennia - longer than the Latin script has been used! Cuneiform records the name of the first ruler known in world history: the name of Aannipadda, son of Mesanniadd, king of the first Ur dynasty, which ruled approximately 3100–2930 BC and which, according to the Babylonian “Royal Codes”, was the third dynasty after global flood. But the nature of this inscription leaves no doubt that by the time of its appearance, cuneiform had already gone through centuries of development. The most recent cuneiform inscriptions found so far date back to the time of the last Persian rulers of the Achaemenid dynasty, whose empire was crushed in 330 BC by Alexander the Great. The first examples of cuneiform writing, a script even more mysterious than Egyptian, were brought to Europe by the Italian traveler Pietro della Balle in the first half of the 17th century. Although these samples were not exact copies in our minds, they contained a word that, 150 years later, made it possible to decipher them. The following texts were brought back at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries German doctor Engelbert Kaempfer, who was the first to use the term “Cuneatae”, that is, “cuneiform”; after him - the French artist Guillaume J. Grelot, a companion of the famous traveler Chardin, and the Dutchman Cornelius de Bruijn - the copies he made still amaze with their impeccability. Equally accurate, but much more extensive copies were brought by the Danish traveler, German by birth, Carsten Niebuhr (1733–1815). All the texts were from Persepolis, the residence of the Persian king Darius III, whose palace was burned by Alexander the Great “in a state of intoxication,” as Diodorus notes, “when he was losing control of himself.”

Niebuhr's messages, which arrived in Western Europe from 1780, aroused great interest among scientists and the public. What kind of letter is this? Is this even a letter? Maybe these are just ornaments? “It looks as if sparrows have hopped across wet sand.”

And if this is a letter, then in what language from the “Babylonian confusion of languages” were the brought fragments written? Philologists, Orientalists and historians in many universities have tried their best to solve this problem. Their attention had not yet been diverted by the rediscovery of Egypt. The greatest results were achieved by Niebuhr himself, who had the advantage of a scientist conducting research right on the spot: he established that the Persepolis inscriptions are heterogeneous, they distinguish three types of cuneiform and that one of these types is clearly sound - he counted 42 characters in it (in fact there are only 32 of them). The German orientalist Oluf G. Tychsen (1734–1815) recognized the often repeated oblique cuneiform element separator mark between words and came to the conclusion that behind these three types of cuneiform there must be three languages. Danish bishop and philologist Friedrich H.C. Munter even established in his Study of the Persepolis Inscriptions (1800) the time of their origin. Based on the circumstances under which the finds were made, he concluded that they dated back to the Achaemenid dynasty, that is, at the latest to the second third of the 4th century BC.

And this is all that was known about cuneiform by 1802. We became convinced of the correctness of these conclusions much later, but at that time they were lost in many errors and incorrect assumptions. At the same time, distrust was often expressed even in the little that was known.

Development of cuneiform writing (according to Pöbel). The first sign on the left from the last on the right is separated by 1500-2000 years

It was under such circumstances that the Göttingen teacher Georg Friedrich Grotefend made a bet with his friend Fiorillo, the secretary of the Göttingen library, that he would decipher this letter. Yes, so much so that it can be read! True, provided that he gets at least some texts at his disposal.

Less than six months later, the impossible happened - Grotefend actually read cuneiform. This is incredible, but a twenty-seven-year-old man, whose only entertainment was puzzles, and whose life ideals boiled down to an ordinary career as a school teacher, which later culminated in the position of director of a lyceum in Hanover, really did not think about anything other than winning a “knowingly lost” bet. This is what Grotefend had at his disposal (or rather, what he did not have at his disposal).

Firstly, he did not even know what language these inscriptions were in, since in Mesopotamia over the past two to three thousand years many peoples and languages ​​have replaced each other.

Secondly, he had no idea about the nature of this letter: whether it was sound, syllabic, or whether its individual signs expressed entire words.

Thirdly, he did not know in what direction this letter was read, in what position the text should be when reading.

Fourthly, he did not have at his disposal a single inscription in the original: he only did not always have exact copies from the recordings of Niebuhr and Pietro della Balle, which, according to the terms of the bet, Fiorillo obtained for him.

Fifthly, unlike Champollion, he did not know a single oriental language, for he was a Germanic philologist.

And finally, for cuneiform texts - at least at that stage of study - there was no Rosetta tablet, no bilingual system.

But along with these disadvantages, he also had advantages: the habit of working methodically, an interest in writing in 1799, shortly after graduating from the University of Göttingen, Grotefend published the book “On Pasigraphy, or Universal Writing” - and, finally, the desire to win a bet.

Thus, he was a man of a completely different kind than Champollion, at that time still an eleven-year-old schoolboy, and he was faced with a completely different, although no less difficult, task, and therefore he acted in a completely different way.

First, he figured out the technology of the unknown letter. Cuneiform signs had to be applied with some sharp instrument: vertical lines were carried out from top to bottom, horizontal - from left to right, as indicated by a gradual weakening of the pressure. The lines apparently ran horizontally and began on the left, as in our method of writing, for otherwise the scribe would blur what had already been written. And they read this letter, obviously, in the same direction in which it was written. All these were fundamental discoveries, now self-evident, but for that time they were a kind of Columbus egg.

He then checked and accepted Niebuhr's assumption that this letter was “alphabetic”, since there were relatively few characters in it. He also accepted Tychsen's hypothesis that the repeated oblique element represents a dividing sign between words. And only after this Grotefend began deciphering, deciding, for lack of any other way out, to proceed not from philology, but from logic; Comparing signs with each other, determine their possible meanings.

These were inscriptions that were no different from each other, but in the inscriptions some words are often repeated: “This building was built...”, “Here lies...” In the inscriptions made at the behest of the rulers - based on the circumstances of the find, he concluded that they belonged specifically to rulers - usually there was a name and title at the beginning: “We, by the grace of God, X, king,” etc. If this assumption is correct, he told himself, then it is likely that one of these inscriptions belongs to the Persian king, because Persepolis was the residence and Persian kings. We know their names, albeit in the Greek version, but it cannot differ significantly from the original. Only later did it become clear that the Greek Dareios in Persian sounded Darajavaus, the Greek Xerxes - Hsyarasa. Their titles are also known: king, great king. We also know that they usually put the name of their father next to their name. Then you can try the following formula: “King B, son of King A. King B, son of King B.”

Then the search began. There is no need to dwell on how he found this formula, how much patience and perseverance it took. It's not hard to imagine. Let's just say that he found it. True, in the texts it appeared in a slightly different form: “Tsar B, son of A. Tsar B, son of King B.” This means that King B was not of royal descent, since there is no royal title next to the name of his father (A). How to explain the appearance of such successors among some Persian kings? What kind of kings were these? He turned to ancient and modern historians for help... however, we’ll let him tell us about the course of his reasoning.

“It could not be Cyrus and Cambyses, since the names in the inscriptions begin with different characters. It could not have been Cyrus and Artaxerxes, because the first name is too short in relation to the number of characters in the inscription, and the second is too long. I could only assume that these were the names of Darius and Xerxes, which were so consistent with the nature of the inscription that there was no need to doubt the correctness of my guess. This was also evidenced by the fact that in the son’s inscription the royal title was given, while in the father’s inscription there was no such title...”

Reading of the names of Darius, Xerxes and Hastaspes in the Persepolis inscriptions, proposed by Grotefend, and their reading today

So Grotefend revealed 12 signs, or, more precisely, 10, by solving the equation with all the unknowns!

After this, one could expect that the hitherto unknown teacher would attract the attention of the whole world, that he would be given the highest academic honors, that crowds prone to sensationalism would greet him with enthusiastic applause - after all, these ten signs were the key to the ancient Persian language, the key to all Mesopotamian cuneiform scripts and languages...

But nothing of the kind happened. The son of a poor shoemaker, who was not a member of the Academy, could not be allowed to appear before the venerable scientific council of the famous Göttingen Scientific Society. However, the Scientific Society was not averse to hearing a report on his discoveries. And then Professor Tikhsen read it, read it in three sittings - so few learned men were interested in the results of the work of this “dilettante” - on September 4, October 2 and November 13, 1802. Tychsen also took care of publishing the theses “On the question of deciphering Persepolis cuneiform texts” by Grotefend.

However, publish full text The University of Göttingen refused this work under the pretext that the author was not an orientalist. What a blessing that the fate of the electric light bulb or anti-rabies serum did not depend on these gentlemen, because Edison was also not an electrical engineer, and Pasteur was not a doctor! Only three years later a publisher was found who published Grotefend’s work as applications to “Ideas on politics, means of transportation and trade of the largest peoples of the ancient world” by Geeren.

Grotefend lived long enough (1775–1853) to wait for the sensational news that in 1846, under fat headlines, was distributed by the press all over the world: the cuneiform texts were read by the Englishman G. K. Rawlinson.

Jean-François Champollion (French Jean-François Champollion; (December 23, 1790 - March 4, 1832) - the great French Orientalist historian and linguist, recognized founder of Egyptology. Thanks to his deciphering of the text of the Rosetta Stone on September 14, 1822, it became possible to read hieroglyphs and further development of Egyptology as a science.

Jean-François Champollion was born on December 23, 1790 in the city of Figeac in Dauphiné (modern département of Lot) and was the youngest of seven children, two of whom died in infancy, before his birth. His interest in ancient history, in the wake of increased attention to Ancient Egypt after Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign of 1798-1801, was developed by his brother, archaeologist Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac.

Jean-François Champollion began early independent research, using the advice of Sylvester de Sacy. While still a child, Champollion demonstrated a genius ability to learn languages. By the age of 16, he had studied 12 languages ​​and presented to the Grenoble Academy his scientific work “Egypt under the Pharaohs” (“L’Egypte sous les Pharaons”, published in 1811), in which he showed a thorough knowledge of the Coptic language. At the age of 20, he was fluent in French, Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Coptic, Zend, Pahlavi, Syriac, Aramaic, Farsi, Amharic, Sanskrit and Chinese.

At the age of 19, on July 10, 1809, Champollion became a professor of history in Grenoble. Champollion's brother, Jacques-Joseph Figeac, was a zealous Bonapartist and, after Napoleon Bonaparte's return from the island of Elba, was appointed personal secretary to the emperor. Entering Grenoble on March 7, 1815, Napoleon met with the Champollion brothers and became interested in the research of Jean-François. Despite the fact that Napoleon had to solve important military-political problems, he once again personally visited the young Egyptologist in the local library and continued the conversation about the languages ​​of the Ancient East.

Champollion lost the professorship he received in Grenoble after the Bourbon restoration in 1815 as a Bonapartist and opponent of the monarchy. Moreover, for his participation in the organization of the “Delphic Union” he was exiled for a year and a half. Deprived of the means to live in Grenoble, he moved to Paris in 1821.

He actively took part in the search for the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, interest in which intensified after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone - a slab with an inscription of gratitude from the priests to Ptolemy V Epiphanes, dating back to 196 BC. e. For 10 years, he tried to determine the correspondence of the hieroglyphs to the modern Coptic language, derived from Egyptian, based on the research of the Swedish diplomat David Johan Åkerblat. Champollion was eventually able to read the hieroglyphs outlined in the cartouche for the names "Ptolemy" and "Cleopatra", but his further progress was hampered by the prevailing opinion that phonetic notation began to be used only in the Late Kingdom or Hellenistic period to represent Greek names. However, he soon came across cartouches with the names of the pharaohs Ramesses II and Thutmose III, who ruled in the New Kingdom. This allowed him to put forward the assumption that Egyptian hieroglyphs were primarily used not to designate words, but to designate consonant sounds and syllables.

In his work “Lettre à Mr. Dacier relative à l'alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques" (1822) Champollion summarized his first studies in the field of deciphering hieroglyphs, and the appearance of his next work "Précis du système hiérogl. d. anciens Egyptiens ou recherches sur les élèments de cette écriture” (1824) was the beginning of the existence of Egyptology. Champollion's work was actively supported and promoted by his teacher Sylvester de Sacy, permanent secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions, who himself had previously failed in his attempt to decipher the Rosetta Stone.

Around the same time, Champollion systematized Egyptian mythology on the basis of new material obtained (“Panthéon égyptien”), and also studied the collections of Italian museums, drawing the attention of the scientific community to the Turin royal papyrus (“Deux lettres à M. le duc de Blacas d'Aulps relatives au musée royal de Turin, formant une histoire chronologique des dynasties égyptiennes";

In 1826, Champollion was commissioned to organize the first museum specializing in Egyptian antiquities, and in 1831 he was awarded the first chair of Egyptology. In 1828-1829, together with the Italian linguist Ippolito Rosellini, he made his first expedition to Egypt and Nubia. During the expedition, he studied a huge number of ancient Egyptian monuments and inscriptions, and worked fruitfully on the collection and research of epigraphic and archaeological material.

During a business trip to Egypt, Champollion finally undermined his poor health and died in Paris as a result of an apoplectic stroke at the age of only 41 years (1832), without having time to systematize the results of his expedition, published after Champollion’s death in four volumes entitled “Monuments de l'Egypte et de la Nubie" (1835-1845) and two volumes of "Notices descriptives conformes aux manuscrits autographes rédigés sur les lieux par Champollion le jeunes" (1844). Champollion's main linguistic work, Grammaire Égyptienne, was also published after the author's death by order of the Minister of Public Education Guizot. Champollion is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.