Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts: Difference between revisions

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The scholar who corrected the most fundamental faults in Champollion's work was [[Karl Richard Lepsius]], a Prussian philologist who began studying the Egyptian language using Champollion's grammar. He struck up a friendship with Rosellini and began corresponding with him about the language.{{sfn|Thompson|2015a|pp=198–199}} Lepsius's ''Lettre à M. le Professeur H. Rosellini sur l'Alphabet hiéroglyphique'', which he published in 1837, explained the functions of biliteral signs, triliteral signs and phonetic complements, although those terms had not yet been coined. It listed 30 uniliteral signs, compared with more than 200 in Champollion's system and 24 in the modern understanding of the hieroglyphic script.{{sfn|Robinson|2012|pp=244–245}} Lepsius's letter greatly strengthened the case for Champollion's general approach to hieroglyphs while correcting its deficiencies, and it definitively moved the focus of Egyptology from decipherment to translation.{{sfn|Thompson|2015a|p=199}} Champollion, Rosellini and Lepsius are often considered the founders of Egyptology; Young is sometimes included as well.{{sfn|Robinson|2012|p=243}}

Lepsius was one of a new generation of Egyptologists who emerged in the mid-nineteenth century.{{sfn|Thompson|2015a|p=198}} [[Emmanuel de Rougé]], who began studying Egyptian in 1839, was the first person to translate a full-length ancient Egyptian text; he published the first translations of Egyptian literary texts in 1856. In the words of one of de Rougé's students, [[Gaston Maspero]], "de Rougé gave us the method which allowed us to utilise and bring to perfection the method of Champollion".{{sfn|Bierbrier|2012|p=476}} Other scholars concentrated on the lesser-known scripts. [[Heinrich Brugsch]] was the first since Young's death to advance the study of demotic, publishing a grammar of it in 1855.{{sfn|Thompson|2015a|pp=272–273}} [[Charles Wycliffe Goodwin]]'s essay "Hieratic Papyri", published in 1858,{{sfn|Bierbrier|2012|p=217}} was the first major contribution to that subject.{{sfn|Thompson|2015a|p=268}} It emphasizedemphasised that hieratic texts, not monumental hieroglyphic inscriptions, were the richest source for understanding the Egyptian language. Goodwin and his contemporary [[François Chabas]] greatly advanced the study of hieratic.{{sfn|Thompson|2015a|pp=268–269}}

In 1866 Lepsius discovered the [[Canopus Decree]], a parallel text like the Rosetta Stone whose inscriptions were all largely intact. The hieroglyphs could now be compared directly with their Greek translation, and the results proved the validity of Champollion'sthe established approach to Egyptian beyond reasonable doubt.{{sfn|Parkinson|1999|pp=41–42}} [[Samuel Birch (Egyptologist)|Samuel Birch]], the foremost figure in British Egyptology during the mid-nineteenth century, published the first extensive dictionary of Egyptian in 1867, and in the same year Brugsch published the first volume of his dictionary of both hieroglyphic and demotic.{{sfn|Thompson|2015a|pp=211, 273}} Brugsch's dictionary established the modern understanding of the sounds of the Egyptian language, which draws upon the phonology of Semitic languages as Hincks suggested.{{sfn|Robinson|2012|p=245}} Egyptologists have continued to refine their understanding of the language up to the present,{{sfn|Loprieno|1995|pp=8–9}}{{sfn|Allen|2014|p=11}} but by this time it was on firm ground.{{sfn|Thompson|2015a|p=273}} Together with the decipherment of cuneiform in the same century, the decipherment of ancient Egyptian had opened the way for the study of the earliest stages of human history.{{sfn|Griffith|1951|pp=38–39}}

==Notes==