Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs: the Rosetta Stone, Champollion, and Young
Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs: the Rosetta Stone, Champollion, and Young It had been over a thousand years since anyone had written or understood Egyptian hieroglyphs. Many had tried to decipher this hieroglyphic script and failed. So, how did Jean-Francois Champollion succeed where others had failed for centuries before him? What were the keys to his success? Early Advances in Decipherment The year is 1822, and scholars have been making some headway into understanding two types of scripts that the ancient Egyptians used, the more famous hieroglyphic script and the demotic script, which was used from the Late Period to the end of Pharaonic history as a kind of cursive script. The recent breakthroughs have been largely due to the French army’s 1799 discovery of a peculiar stone in a military fort…