Portrait of Thomas Young by Henry Briggs, n.d., OpenMind BBVA. 

Thomas Young was an English physicist that made noteworthy strides towards cracking the hieroglyphic codes in 1814. He was the first person to notice that the Rosetta Stone had certain hieroglyphs inscripted that resembled royal names, such as Ptolemy. Young noticed that royal names in hieroglyphic script were always found inside ovals, known as cartouches. However, he was still a strong believer that hieroglyphics were purely symbolic.