Cracking the Egyptian code: the revolutionary life of Jean-François Champollion

Description

The Rosetta Stone, uncovered in 1799 by Napoleon's army, recorded its inscription in three scripts - ancient Greek, Coptic, and hieroglyphic. It would provide scholars with the first clues to unlocking the secrets of Egyptian hieroglyphs, a language lost for nearly two millennia. More than twenty years later a remarkably gifted Frenchman, Jean-Francois Champollion successfully deciphered the hieroglyphs sparking a revolution in our knowledge of ancient Egypt. 'Cracking the Egyptian Code' is the first biography in English of Champollion, widely regarded as the founder of Egyptology. Andrew Robinson meticulously reconstructs how Champollion cracked the code of the hieroglyphic script, describing how Champollion started with Egyptian obelisks in Rome and papyri in European collections, sailed the Nile for a year, studied the tombs in the Valley of the Kings (a name he first coined), and carefully compared the three scripts on the Rosetta Stone to penetrate the mystery of the... Prologue: Egyptomania 1. Hieroglyphic `Delirium' before Champollion 2. A Revolutionary Childhood 3. Reluctant Schoolboy 4. Egypt Encountered 5. Paris and the Rosetta Stone 6. Teenage Professor 7. The Race Begins 8. Napoleon and Champollion 9. Exile and Revolt 10. Breakthrough 11. An Egyptian Renaissance 12. Curator at the Louvre 13. To Egypt, At Last 14. In Search of Ramesses 15. First Professor of Egyptology 16. The Hieroglyphs after Champollion Postscript: Geniuses and Polymaths