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Updated: June 9, 2025
Thus Fourier had imposed upon himself the reserve which certain vanities have blamed so severely. I shall add that nowhere throughout the precious proof sheets of M. Champollion do we perceive traces of the miserable feelings of jealousy which have been attributed to Napoleon.
It was placed in the British Museum, and care was taken that copies of the three inscriptions should reach the various Egyptologists, among them Champollion. The demotic inscription that is to say, the text in the writing of the people, was one of the most inviting to decipher, because the signs composing it seemed to be letters representing sound.
After his return to Denmark he published his discoveries for the benefit of the scientific world and seriously tried to read some meaning into his own texts. He was not successful. But this does not astonish us when we understand the difficulties which he was obliged to solve. When Champollion tackled the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics he was able to make his studies from little pictures.
The discovery of the Rosetta Stone a large black slab of stone with an identical inscription in hieroglyphics, in demotic and in Greek, furnished to Champollion and to Young the clew to the deciphering of the Egyptian writing, and thus the key to the sense of the monumental inscriptions. The Egyptian manuscripts were made of the pith of the byblus plant, cut into strips.
Justly great is the fame of the Frenchman Champollion, who has the honor of having first deciphered and read this lost language, and opened to us the secret treasures of its history and religion. But with the exploration of Egypt the scholarship of the world was satisfied for fifty years.
"We will carry this box full of secrets to our boat, where you will, at your leisure, decipher this historic document and read the riddle set by these hawks, scarabæi, kneeling figures, serrated lines, winged uræus, and spatula hands, which you read as readily as did the great Champollion."
Near the spring this wall was built very high and strong, and was pierced with loopholes. It also served as an outwork. The steps and much of the wall still exist. The spring in modern times came to be called Caesar's Well, because the elder Champollion and others endeavoured to prove that Capdenac was the site of Uxellodunum.
Nothing is easier than to verify his descriptions by reference to the works of Champollion, Mariette, Wilkinson, Rawlinson, Erman, Edwards, and Maspero. Scarcely here and there will the reader find a possible error in his statements.
How provokingly slow are most domestic chieftains in this anxious operation! They turn the letters over and over, and upside and down; arrange, confuse, mistake, assort; pretend, like Champollion, to decipher illegible franks, and deliver with a slight remark, which is intended as a friendly admonition, the documents of the unlucky wight who encourages unprivileged correspondents.
M. Champollion, who had been on the same pursuit, examined the fine collection of papyri in the museum at Turin, and afterwards went to Egypt to pursue his studies on hieroglyphics, to our knowledge of which he contributed greatly.
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