The writing systems used in ancient Egypt were deciphered in the early nineteenth century through the work of several European scholars, especially Jean-François Champollion and Thomas Young. Ancient
Jean-François Champollion in 1823, holding his list of phonetic hieroglyphic signs. Portrait by Victorine-Angélique-Amélie Rumilly.
Ibn Wahshiyya's attempted translation of hieroglyphs
A page from Athanasius Kircher's Obeliscus Pamphilius (1650), with fanciful translations given for the figures and hieroglyphs on an obelisk in Rome
Page from Recueil d'antiquités égyptiennes by Anne Claude de Caylus, 1752, comparing hieroglyphs to demotic script (No1), and to what is now known to be Aramaic in the Phoenician alphabet (No2, No3) from the Carpentras Stele.
Jean-François Champollion
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Jean-François Champollion, also known as Champollion le jeune, was a French philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of
Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts
…The writing systems used in ancient Egypt were deciphered in the early nineteenth century through the work of several European scholars, especially Jean-François Champollion and Thomas Young. Ancient Egyptian forms of writing, which included the hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic scripts, ceased to be understood in the…
Portrait by Léon Cogniet, 1831
Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac, brother and faithful supporter of the scientific endeavors of Jean-François Champollion
The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 and has been displayed in the British Museum since 1802. This trilingual stela presents the same text in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek, thus providing the first clues based on which Young and Champollion deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphic script.
Bonaparte Devant le Sphinx (Bonaparte Before the Sphinx) by Jean-Léon Gérôme. Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt (1798–1801) raised the profile of Egypt and its civilization in France, and started a period of Egyptomania