Translating Hieroglyphics

At the same time that Young was wrestling with hieroglyphics in England, Francois Champollion was trying to solve the puzzle in France. ChampoUion's interest in hieroglyphics did not spring up in a night ; it was of slow growth, starting in his childhood when Egypt bulked large in the imaginations of most French boys owing to the stirring deeds of Napoleon against the Mamelukes. By the time Champollion was eleven years old, he was already taking more than an ordinary boyish interest in things Egyptian, and, as the years passed, he slowly gathered books and material bearing on the subject which he was to make pecuHarly his own.

He was eager, anxious, to decipher hieroglyphics. It was the ambition of his life, the thing for which he lived, of which he dreamed. He collected every copy of the strange picture-writing that he could find in order to study it, in the hope of deciphering one more character. He was terribly handicapped by the small quantity of material on which he could work, and while his brilUant contemporary Young lay dying in England, in 1829, ChampolUon was leading an expedition in Egypt, gathering material for France.

Champollion found the picture-writing even more complex than any one anticipated. A single letter might be represented by seven or eight quite different signs, and a sign might represent a whole word or part of a word. A circle with lines radiating from it might represent the sun god, or it might stand for the word " day." A sign which ordinarily stood for a letter might represent a god if a dot or some other sign came after it.

The Egyptian hieroglyphics were indeed one of the greatest puzzles of the ages. The discovery of other inscriptions helped to verify Champollion's work, and provide proof that he was deciphering the signs accurately. It is, nevertheless, incredible that any human being could read even a sign of this dead writing correctly. That any one could do what Champollion ultimately did is almost a miracle. He laboured at his self-appointed task with so much courage and determination that he eventually succeeded in building up a hieroglyphic dictionary - a marvelous feat.

Champollion himself did not long survive Young, for he so sapped his strength over his Egyptian expedition that he fell ill and died in 1832. He was comparatively a young man, only forty two, yet he crowded an enormous amount of work into these few years, and it may truly be said that his love of Egyptology cost him his life.

By the aid of his dictionary, which grew directly out of the finding of the Rosetta Stone, our scholars are now able to read without much trouble the sacred writings of the ancient Egyptians. Thus that fragment of black basalt in the British Museum, which is passed unnoticed by so many people, is really one of the most interesting stones in the world.

Ancient languages is just one of the topics that Peter likes to write about. Check out his other articles about Fuel Cell Cars, HHO Gas and DUI charges.

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