Jean-François Champollion was not ten years old when Napoleon Bonaparte undertook an expedition to Egypt in 1798. He takes an interest in this land full of mysteries. Following the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Lieutenant Bouchard during the Napoleonic expedition (1799), Champollion, very young, undertook to decode the famous hieroglyphs inscribed on it.
In 1821, he deciphered the name of Pharaoh Ptolemy V inscribed on this black stone, then that of Cleopatra on the Philae obelisk. On September 14, 1822, Champollion deciphered the code of hieroglyphs, composed of ideograms (which express an idea) and sounds! In 1824 he wrote the entire hieroglyphic system. In 1826, he was appointed curator of Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre.
In 1828, he finally set foot in the Land of the Pharaohs and confronted his theories with reality. Elected to the Academy of Belles-Lettres, he directed the first chair of ancient Egypt at the College de France. The one who wrote “I belong to Egypt and she is everything to me” is considered the father of Egyptology.
December 23, 1790 - March 4, 1832
Status
Egyptologist