شامبليون

شامبليون



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Jean-François Champollion



Jean-François champollion
(23 December 1790 – 4 March 1832) was a French classical scholar,
philologist and orientalist, decipherer of the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Champollion published the first translation of the Rosetta Stone
hieroglyphs in 1822, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a
combination of phonetic and ideographic signs.



Biography

Champollion was born in Figeac, Lot, the last of seven children (two of
whom had already died before he was born). He was raised in humble
circumstances; because his parents could not afford to send him to
school, and he was taught to read by his brother Jacques. Jacques,
although studious and largely self-educated, did not have Jean-François'
genius for language; however, he was talented at earning a living, and
supported Jean-François for most of his life.

He lived with his brother in Grenoble for several years, and even as a
child showed an extraordinary linguistic talent. By the age of 16 he had
mastered a dozen languages and had read a paper before the Grenoble
Academy concerning the Coptic language. By 20 he could also speak Latin,
Greek, Hebrew, Amharic, Sanskrit, Avestan, Pahlavi, Arabic, Syriac,
Chaldean, Persian and Ge'ez in addition to his native French. In 1809,
he became assistant-professor of History at Grenoble. His interest in
oriental languages, especially Coptic, led to his being entrusted with
the task of deciphering the writing on the then recently-discovered
Rosetta Stone, and he spent the years 1822–1824 on this task. His 1824
work Précis du système hiéroglyphique gave birth to the entire field of
modern Egyptology. He also identified the importance of the Turin King
List, and dated the Dendera zodiac to the Roman period. His interest in
Egyptology was originally inspired by Napoleon's Egyptian Campaigns
1798–1801. champollion was subsequently made Professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France.


Egyptian hieroglyphs

Thomas Young was one of the first to attempt decipherment of the
Egyptian hieroglyphs, basing his own work on the investigations of
Swedish diplomat Åkerblad, who built up a demotic alphabet of 29 letters
(15 turned out to be correct) and translated all personal names and
other words in the Demotic part of the Rosetta Stone in 1802. Åkerblad
however, wrongly believed that demotic was entirely phonetic or
alphabetic. Young thought the same, and by 1814 he had completely
translated the enchorial (which champollion
labeled Demotic as it is called today) text of the Rosetta Stone (he
had a list with 86 demotic words). Young then studied the hieroglyphic
alphabet and made some progress but failed to recognise that demotic and
hieroglyphic texts were paraphrases and not simple translations. In
1823 he published an Account of the Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphic
Literature and Egyptian Antiquities. Some of Young's conclusions
appeared in the famous article Egypt he wrote for the 1818 edition of
the Encyclopædia Britannica.

When Champollion, in 1822, published his translation of the hieroglyphs
and the key to the grammatical system, Young and all others praised this
work. Young had indicated in a letter to Gurney that he wished to see champollion acknowledge that he had made use of Young's earlier work in assisting his eventual deciphering of hieroglyphics. champollion
was unwilling to share the credit even though initially he had not
recognized that hieroglyphics were phonetic[citation needed]. Young
corrected him on this, and champollion
attempted to have an early article withdrawn once he realized his
mistake[citation needed]. Strongly motivated by the political tensions
of that time, the British supported Young and the French Champollion. champollion completely translated the hieroglyphic grammar based in part upon the earlier work of others including Young. However, champollion
maintained that he alone had deciphered the hieroglyphs. After 1826,
he did offer Young access to demotic manuscripts in the Louvre, when he
was a curator. Baron Georges Cuvier (1825) credited Champollion's work
as an important aid in dating the Dendera Zodiac.

Franco-Tuscan Expedition

In 1827 Ippolito Rosellini, considered the founder of Egyptology in
Italy, went to Paris for a year in order to improve his knowledge of the
method of decipherment proposed by Champollion. The two philologists
decided to organize an expedition to Egypt to confirm the validity of
the discovery. Headed by champollion
and assisted by Rosellini his first disciple and great friend, the
mission was known as the Franco-Tuscan Expedition, and was made possible
by the support of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, and the King
of France, Charles X.

On the 21st of July 1828, with four members, they boarded the ship Eglé
at Toulon and set sail for Egypt. They travelled upstream along the Nile
and studied an exhaustive number of monuments and inscriptions. The
expedition led to a posthumously-published extensive Monuments de
l'Égypte et de la Nubie (1845). Unfortunately, Champollion's expedition
was blemished by instances of unchecked looting. Most notably, while
studying the Valley of the Kings, he irreparably damaged KV17, the tomb
of Seti I, by physically removing two large wall sections with
mirror-image scenes. The scenes are now in the collections of the Louvre
and the museum of Florence.

Exhausted by his labours during and after his scientific expedition to Egypt, champollion died of an apoplectic attack in Paris in 1832 at the age of 41. He is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Certain portions of Champollion's works were edited by his elder
brother, Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac; Jacques Joseph's son,
Aimé-Louis (1812–1894), wrote a biography of the two brothers.


In popular culture

Champollion was portrayed by Elliot Cowan in the 2005 BBC docudrama
Egypt. He was prominently featured in an episode of Carl Sagan's
television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The History Channel's
Secrets of the Rosetta Stone featured Champollion's efforts.




Works

* Le Normant, ed (1819). Annales des Lagides, ou chronologie des rois grecs d'Égypte successeurs d'Alexandre le Grand. ;
* Lettre à M. Dacier relative à l'alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques. 1822. ;
* Panthéon égyptien, collection des personnages mythologiques de
l'ancienne Égypte, d'après les monuments (explanatory text to
illustrations by Léon-Jean-Joseph Dubois ). 1823. .
* Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens. 1824. ;
* Lettres à M. le Duc de Blacas d'Aulps. 1826. ;
* Notice descriptive des monuments égyptiens du musée Charles X. 1827. ;
* Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens ou
Recherches sur les éléments premiers de cette écriture sacrée, sur leurs
diverses combinaisons, et sur les rapports de ce système avec les
autres méthodes graphiques égyptiennes. 1828. ;
* Lettres écrites d'Égypte et de Nubie. 1828-1829. ;
* Grammaire égyptienne. 1836, posthumously. ;
* Dictionnaire égyptien en écriture hiéroglyphique. 1841, posthumously. ;
* Others - Principes généraux de l'écriture sacrée, new edition with
a preface by Christiane Ziegler, Institut d'Orient, 1984.



Musées Champollion

* A museum devoted to Jean-François champollion
was created in his birthplace at Figeac in Lot. It was inaugurated 19
December 1986 in the presence of President François Mitterrand and Jean
Leclant, secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie des inscriptions et
belles-lettres. After two years of building work and extension, the
museum re-opened in 2007. Besides Champollion's life and discoveries,
the museum also recounts the history of writing. The whole façade is
covered in pictograms, from the original ideograms of the whole world.
* The "*Maison Champollion" at Vif in Isère, formerly the property of Jean-François's brother.