Portrait of Jean-François Champollion, Léon Cogniet. Louvre, 1831
Jean-François Champollion was a French linguist. Champollion was actually fluent in Egyptian Coptic, a script that replaced the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. He began using his knowledge of Coptic to translate the hieroglyphics, and eventually discovered that hieroglyphics were not just symbolic like the world had previously thought. By using Young’s cartouche idea, Champollion was able to find out that hieroglyphics were predominantly phonetic by deciphering the names Ramses and Thutmoth in 1822. Once he figured out that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were phonetic, he began translating the rest of the 700 hieroglyphic symbols into sounds.
