Deciphering hieroglyphs

This was a task beyond linguistics and humanism, which would open the door not only to writing one of the first historical civilizations, but also to its ancient culture.

Since past centuries, many scholars have tried to decipher the mystery hidden by these symbols, whose key was lost 1500 years ago; However, in 1799 the Rosetta Stone was discovered during the French military campaign led by Napoleon Bonaparte (1798-1801).

The rock of granodiorite (pressed black basalt) is part of an Egyptian stela containing a decree issued in Memphis in 196 BC by a council of priests honoring Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his reign.

Fortunately for human knowledge, the text appears in three types of writing: the upper part in hieroglyphs (used by the priestly class at the time), the middle part in demotic (used for everyday purposes in society) and the lower part, in the ancient language. Greek which is typical of the Ptolemaic dynasty and administration, is of Greek origin.

It will be Jean-François Champollion, historian, linguist, and lover of Egyptian mysteries, who devoted years of his life to comparing the three texts and, ultimately, deciphering hieroglyphs that have remained elusive for so long.

By the age of sixteen, this scientist had already mastered Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Chinese and some other Asian languages. In 1820, motivated by enigma, Champollion took up the project of deciphering hieroglyphs, eventually overcoming the achievements of Thomas Young, who was responsible for the first developments in the process prior to 1819.

Through his knowledge of Coptic – dating from the last phase of the ancient Egyptian era, written in Greek letters – the Frenchman was able to make connections between the symbols he was studying and the sounds he already knew from Coptic words, only to find their correspondence. . In the Greek text of the Rosetta Stone.

Hieroglyphs have signs representing sounds and others representing ideas; Basically, scholars believe that these were just symbolic symbols. The most important contribution of the young philologist was the discovery that it also has phonemic value.

Studying the rock (paper copy, the original has been kept in the British Museum since 1802), he discovered that to represent the initial sounds, the Egyptians used an image, for example, for the letter L, the lion was used and the eagle for A.

Following this reasoning, Champollion ended up completing an alphabet of hieroglyphs that made it possible to read papyri and inscriptions on the walls of tombs and temples. Because of the impulse he gave to Egyptology and the understanding of Egyptian culture, he is considered the father of this field of scientific knowledge.

(taken from orb)