Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:03, 23 March 2023

Revision as of 08:07, 23 March 2023

Line 167:

In July Champollion rebutted an analysis by [[Jean-Baptiste Biot]] of the text surrounding an Egyptian temple relief known as the [[Dendera Zodiac]]. In doing so he pointed out that hieroglyphs of stars in this text seemed to indicate that the nearby words referred to something related to stars, such as constellations. He called the signs used in this way "signs of the type", although he would later dub them "determinatives".{{sfn|Adkins|Adkins|2000|pp=176–177}}

Champollion announced his proposed readings of the Greco-Roman cartouches in his ''[[Lettre à M. Dacier]]'', which he completed on 22 September 1822. He read it to the Académie on 27 September, with Young among the audience.{{sfn|Adkins|Adkins|2000|pp=182, 187}} This letter is often regarded as the founding document of Egyptology, butalthough it represented only a modest advance over Young's work.{{sfn|Thompson|2015a|pp=118–119}} Yet it ended by suggesting, without elaboration, that phonetic signs might have been used in writing proper names from a very early point in Egyptian history.{{sfn|Buchwald|Josefowicz|2020|p=388}} How Champollion reached this conclusion is mostly not recorded in contemporary sources. His own writings suggest that one of the keys was his conclusion that the [[Abydos King List]] contained the name "[[Ramesses (Egyptian name)|Ramesses]]", a royal name found in the works of Manetho, and that some of his other evidence came from copies of inscriptions in Egypt made by [[Jean-Nicolas Huyot]].{{sfn|Buchwald|Josefowicz|2020|pp=384–386}}

{{Hiero|Ramesses{{sfn|Adkins|Adkins|2000|pp=180–181}}|<hiero>ra-ms-s-s</hiero> |align=right|era=egypt}}