The mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs is a guess by Francois Champollion. How Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered
Insight into history Ancient Egypt for a long time hindered by the barrier of Egyptian writing. Scientists have long tried to read the letter of the ancient Egyptians. But in 1790 a man came into our world, Jean Francois Champollion(1790–1832) - a brilliant French linguist who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs. There is evidence from one of his teachers that, at a young age, Champollion vowed to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.
One day, Champollion came across a newspaper, from which he learned that in March 1799, a certain soldier from Napoleon’s expeditionary force found near Rosetta, a small Egyptian village in the Nile Delta, “a flat basalt stone the size of a board.” desk, on which two Egyptian and one Greek inscriptions were carved."
The Rosetta Stone became the key to unraveling Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic writing. However, before the “era of Champollion,” only very few scientists managed to make progress in deciphering the texts carved on it. For example, the Englishman Thomas Young (1773–1829) was able to establish the sound meaning of the five hieroglyphic signs of the Rosetta Stone, but this did not bring science one iota closer to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Only the genius of Champollion could solve this seemingly insoluble problem.
Champollion, even before Jung's discovery, came to the conclusion that some Egyptian hieroglyphs were signs that conveyed sounds. Already in 1810, he expressed the opinion that the Egyptians could write foreign names with such phonetic signs. And in 1813, Champollion suggested that alphabetic characters were also used to convey suffixes and prefixes of the Egyptian language.
In 1820, Champollion correctly determined the sequence of types of Egyptian hieroglyphs (hieroglyphics - hieratic - demotic). By this time, it had already been precisely established that in the latest type of writing - demotic - there are letter signs. On this basis, Champollion comes to the conviction that sound signs should be sought among the early species letters - hieroglyphs. He examines the royal name “Ptolemy” on the Rosetta Stone and identifies 7 Egyptian hieroglyphs-letters in it. Studying a copy of the hieroglyphic inscription on the obelisk, originating from the temple of Isis on the island of Philae, he reads the name of Queen Cleopatra. As a result, Champollion determined the sound meaning of five more Egyptian hieroglyphs, and after reading the names of other Greco-Macedonian and Roman rulers of Egypt, he increased the hieroglyphic alphabet to nineteen characters.
An important question remained to be answered: perhaps only foreign names were transmitted in Egyptian hieroglyphs-letters, in particular the names of the rulers of Egypt from the Ptolemaic dynasty, and real Egyptian words were written in a non-sound way? On September 14, 1822, Champollion managed to read a copy of the hieroglyphic inscription from the temple in the name of "Ramesses". Then the name of another pharaoh was read - "Thutmose". Thus, Champollion proved that already in ancient times the Egyptians, along with symbolic hieroglyphic signs, used alphabetic signs.
Champollion concluded that the Egyptians had a semi-alphabetic writing system, since they, like some other peoples of the East, did not use vowels in writing.
After many years of desk work, Champollion now had to verify in practice the correctness of his conclusions. In July 1828, a man came to Egypt for the first time, fluent in language ancient Egyptians!
Champollion began to look for inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphs. After visiting the ruins of Memphis, he went down the Nile. In Tell el-Amarna, he discovered and explored the remains of a temple (later the city of Akhetaten was discovered on this site), and in Dendera he saw the first surviving Egyptian temple.
Until now, there was a belief that the temple in Dendera was dedicated to the goddess Isis, but Champollion was convinced that it was the temple of Hathor, the goddess of love. Moreover, it is not ancient at all. It acquired its present appearance only under the Ptolemies, and was finally completed by the Romans.
From Dendera, the scientist headed to Luxor, where he examined the Temple of Amun at Karnak and determined the individual stages of its long construction. His attention was drawn to a giant obelisk covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs. Who ordered it to be erected? The hieroglyphs enclosed in a cartouche frame answered this question: Hatshepsut, the legendary queen who ruled Egypt for more than twenty years.
Champollion crossed to the west bank of the Nile, visited the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the ruins of the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri. Then the scientist continued his journey south, to the rapids of the Nile, visited Elephantine and Aswan, and visited the temple of Isis on the island of Philae. And everywhere he copied Egyptian hieroglyphs, translated and interpreted them, made sketches, compared architectural styles and established differences between them, determined which era certain finds belonged to. He made discovery after discovery.
Thus, Champollion discovered the system of Egyptian hieroglyphs, establishing that their basis was the sound principle. Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, established the relationship between hieroglyphic and hieratic writing and both of them with demotic, read and translated the first Egyptian texts, compiled a dictionary and grammar of the ancient Egyptian language. In fact, he resurrected this dead language!
When Jean François Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, he was 32 years old, 25 of which were spent studying the dead languages of the East. He was born in 1790 in the small town of Figeac in the south of France. We have no reason to doubt the reliability of the information depicting him as a child prodigy. We have already talked about how he learned to read and write. At the age of 9 he was fluent in Greek and Latin, at 11 he read the Bible in the Hebrew original, which he compared with the Latin Vulgate and its Aramaic predecessor, at the age of 13 (at this time he was already studying in Grenoble and living with his older brother Jacques , professor of Greek literature), he begins to study Arabic, Chaldean, and then Coptic languages; at 15 he takes up Persian and studies the most complex texts himself ancient writing: Avestan, Pahlavi, Sanskrit, and “in order to disperse, and Chinese.” At the age of 17, he became a member of the academy in Grenoble and, as an introductory lecture, read there the preface to his book “Egypt in the reign of the pharaohs,” written based on Greek and biblical sources.
He first came into contact with Egypt when he was 7 years old. The brother, who intended to take part in Napoleon's expedition, but did not have the necessary patronage, spoke of Egypt as a fairy-tale country. Two years later, the boy accidentally came across the Egyptian Courier - exactly the issue that reported the discovery of the Rosetta Plate. Two years later, he comes to look at the Egyptological collection of the prefect of the Iser department, Fourier, who was with Napoleon in Egypt and, among other things, served as secretary of the Egyptian Institute in Cairo. Champollion attracted the attention of the scientist when Fourier Once again inspected their school; the prefect invited the boy to his place and literally enchanted him with his collections. “What does this inscription mean? And on this papyrus? Fourier turned his head. "Nobody can read this." “And I’ll read it! In a few years, when I grow up!” This is not a later invention; Fourier recorded the boy’s words as a curiosity long before Champollion actually deciphered the hieroglyphs.
From Grenoble, Champollion leaves for Paris, which he considers only as “an intermediate station on the way to Egypt.” Mister de Sacy is surprised by his plans and admired by his abilities. The young man knows Egypt and speaks Arabic so much that the native Egyptians take him for a compatriot. The traveler Sominy de Manincourt does not believe that he has never been there. Champollion studies, lives in incredible poverty, goes hungry and does not accept invitations to dinner, since he has only one pair of shoes with holes. Need and the fear of becoming a soldier force him to eventually return to Grenoble - “alas, a beggar like a poet!”
He gets a place at the school where his classmates are still studying, and teaches them history. At the same time, he is working on the history of Egypt (based on Greek, Roman and biblical sources) and a Coptic dictionary (“he is getting fatter every day,” writes Champollion, reaching the thousandth page, “but his creator is doing the opposite”). Since he cannot survive on his salary, he also writes plays for local amateurs. And like a staunch republican in 1789, he composes satirical couplets ridiculing the monarchy, they are directed against Napoleon, but after the Battle of Waterloo they are sung, meaning the Bourbons. When Napoleon returned from Helena for 100 days, Champollion believed his promises of liberal rule without wars. He is even introduced to Bonaparte - Jean's brother François is a zealous supporter of the old-new emperor - and he, on a campaign whose goal is to win the throne again, finds time to talk with him about his plans regarding Egypt. This conversation, as well as the “anti-Bourbon” couplets, is enough for envious colleagues from the Academy to put Champollion on trial, which, at a time when “the verdicts were falling like manna from heaven,” declares him a traitor and dooms him to exile...
Champollion returns to his native Figeac and finds the strength to prepare for a decisive attack on the secret of hieroglyphs. First of all, he studied everything that had been written about hieroglyphs in Egypt itself over the past two thousand years. Thus equipped, but not constrained in his actions, he began the actual study of Egyptian writing and, unlike others scientists started from demotic, that is, folk, writing, which he considered the simplest and at the same time the most ancient, believing that the complex develops from the simple. But here he was wrong; in relation to Egyptian writing, the situation was just the opposite. For many months he moved in a strictly planned direction. When he was convinced that he had reached a dead end, he started all over again. “This opportunity has been tried, exhausted and rejected. There is no need to return to her anymore. And this also has its significance.”
Egyptian hieroglyphs. The names - Ptolemy and Cleopatra - served as the starting point for deciphering Champollion
So Champollion “tried, exhausted and rejected” Horapollon, and at the same time the false views of the entire scientific world. From Plutarch I learned that there are 25 characters in demotic writing, and began to look for them. But even before that, he came to the conclusion that they must represent sounds (that is, that Egyptian writing is not pictorial) and that this also applies to hieroglyphs. “If they were unable to express sounds, the names of kings could not be on the Rosetta Plate.” And he took those of the royal names, “which, apparently, should have sounded the same as in Greek,” as the starting point.
Meanwhile, acting in a similar way, that is, comparing the Greek and Egyptian names of the kings, other scientists came to some results: the Swede Åkerblad, the Dane Zoega and the Frenchman de Sacy. The Englishman Thomas Young advanced further than others - he established the meaning of five signs! In addition, he discovered two special signs that are not letters, but indicate the beginning and end of proper names, thereby answering the question that puzzled de Sacy: why do names in demotic texts begin with the same “letters”? Jung confirmed the previously expressed assumption that in Egyptian writing, with the exception of proper names, vowels are omitted. However, none of these scientists was confident in the results of their work, and Jung even renounced his positions in 1819.
At the first stage, Champollion deciphered some signs of the Rosetta tablet by comparison with the text of some papyrus. He took this first step in August 1808. But only 14 years later he was able to present irrefutable evidence to the scientific world, they are contained in the “Letter to M. Dacier regarding the alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphs,” written in September 1822, and were later given in a lecture given at the Paris Academy. Its content is an explanation of the decryption method.
There are a total of 486 Greek words and 1,419 hieroglyphic characters preserved on the Rosetta Plate. This means that for each word there are an average of three characters, that is, that hieroglyphic characters do not express complete concepts - in other words, hieroglyphs are not pictorial writing. Many of these 1419 characters are also repeated. In total, there were 166 different signs on the slab. Consequently, in hieroglyphic writing, signs express not only sounds, but also entire syllables. Therefore, the Egyptian letter is sound-syllabic. The Egyptians enclosed the names of kings in a special oval frame, a cartouche. On the Rosetta tablet and the Philae obelisk there is a cartouche containing, as the Greek text proves, the name Ptolemaios (in the Egyptian form Ptolmees). It is enough to compare this cartouche with another containing the name Kleopatra. The first, third and fourth characters in the name Ptolemaios are the same as the fifth, fourth and second characters in the name Kleopatra. So, ten signs are already known, the meaning of which is indisputable. With their help, you can read other proper names: Alexander, Berenike, Caesar. Unraveling following signs. It becomes possible to read titles and other words. It is therefore possible to compose an entire hieroglyphic alphabet. As a result of this kind of deciphering, a relationship is established between hieroglyphic writing and demotic, as well as between the two of them and the even more mysterious third, hieratic (priestly), which was used only in temple books. After this, of course, it is possible to compose an alphabet of demotic and hieratic writing. And Greek bilinguals will help translate Egyptian texts...
Champollion did all this - a colossal amount of work, which would have been a problem for scientists working with electronic counting devices. In 1828, he managed to see with his own eyes the land on the banks of the Nile, which he had dreamed of since childhood. He got there as the leader of an expedition that had two ships at its disposal, although he still remained a “traitor” who never received an amnesty. For a year and a half, Champollion examined all the main monuments of the pharaonic empire and was the first to correctly identify - from inscriptions and architectural style- many of them are old. But even the healthy climate of Egypt did not cure his tuberculosis, which he contracted during his student years, living in cold apartment and suffering need in Paris. Upon the return of this most famous scientist of his time, the pride of France, there were no funds for treatment and enhanced nutrition. He died on March 4, 1832 at the age of 42, leaving behind not only the glory of the scientist who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs and the author of the first grammar and dictionary of the ancient Egyptian language, but also the glory of the founder of a new science - Egyptology.
Teacher Grotefend's "knowingly lost" bet
Unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs, the old Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform was forgotten already in classical antiquity. Herodotus, for example, also includes in his work a “translation” of the hieroglyphic inscription on Great Pyramid, which contained information about the costs of its construction, but from his trip to Mesopotamia he returns only with the news that “Assyrian writings exist” (assyria gramata). However, cuneiform played a much more significant role in ancient times than hieroglyphs.
This was the most common type of writing in the Middle East. It has been used from east coast Aegean and Mediterranean seas to the Persian Gulf for three thousand years - longer than they use the Latin letter! Cuneiform records the name of the first ruler known in world history: the name of Aannipadda, son of Mesanniadd, king of the first Ur dynasty, which ruled approximately 3100–2930 BC and which, according to the Babylonian “Royal Codes”, was the third dynasty after global flood. But the nature of this inscription leaves no doubt that by the time of its appearance, cuneiform had already gone through centuries of development. The most recent cuneiform inscriptions found so far date back to the last Persian rulers of the Achaemenid dynasty, whose empire was crushed in 330 BC by Alexander the Great. The first examples of cuneiform writing, a script even more mysterious than Egyptian, were brought to Europe by the Italian traveler Pietro della Balle in the first half of the 17th century. Although these samples were not exact copies in our minds, they contained a word that, 150 years later, made it possible to decipher them. The following texts were brought at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries by the German physician Engelbert Kaempfer, who was the first to use the term “Cuneatae”, that is, “cuneiform”; after him - the French artist Guillaume J. Grelot, companion famous traveler Chardin, and the Dutchman Cornelius de Bruijn - the copies he made still amaze with their impeccability. Equally accurate, but much more extensive copies were brought by the Danish traveler, German by birth, Carsten Niebuhr (1733–1815). All the texts were from Persepolis, the residence of the Persian king Darius III, whose palace was burned by Alexander the Great “in a state of intoxication,” as Diodorus notes, “when he was losing control of himself.”
Niebuhr's messages received in Western Europe since 1780, aroused great interest among scientists and the public. What kind of letter is this? Is this even a letter? Maybe these are just ornaments? “It looks as if sparrows have hopped across wet sand.”
And if this is a letter, then in what language from the “Babylonian confusion of languages” were the brought fragments written? Philologists, Orientalists and historians in many universities have tried their best to solve this problem. Their attention had not yet been diverted by the rediscovery of Egypt. The greatest results were achieved by Niebuhr himself, who had the advantage of a scientist conducting research right on the spot: he established that the Persepolis inscriptions are heterogeneous, they distinguish three types of cuneiform and that one of these types is clearly sound - he counted 42 signs in it (in fact there are only 32 of them). The German orientalist Oluf G. Tychsen (1734–1815) recognized the often repeated oblique cuneiform element separator mark between words and came to the conclusion that behind these three types of cuneiform there must be three languages. Danish bishop and philologist Friedrich H.C. Munter even established in his Study of the Persepolis Inscriptions (1800) the time of their origin. Based on the circumstances under which the finds were made, he concluded that they dated back to the Achaemenid dynasty, that is, at the latest to the second third of the 4th century BC.
And this is all that was known about cuneiform by 1802. We became convinced of the correctness of these conclusions much later, but at that time they were lost in many errors and incorrect assumptions. At the same time, distrust was often expressed even in the little that was known.
Development of cuneiform writing (according to Pöbel). The first sign on the left from the last on the right is separated by 1500-2000 years
It was under such circumstances that the Göttingen teacher Georg Friedrich Grotefend made a bet with his friend Fiorillo, the secretary of the Göttingen library, that he would decipher this letter. Yes, so much so that it can be read! True, provided that he gets at least some texts at his disposal.
Less than six months later, the impossible happened - Grotefend actually read cuneiform. It’s incredible, but a twenty-seven-year-old man whose only entertainment was puzzles, and life ideals reduced to a mediocre career school teacher, which later culminated in the position of director of the Lyceum in Hanover, really did not think about anything other than winning a “knowingly lost” bet. This is what Grotefend had at his disposal (or rather, what he did not have at his disposal).
Firstly, he did not even know what language these inscriptions were in, since in Mesopotamia over the past two to three thousand years many peoples and languages have replaced each other.
Secondly, he had no idea about the nature of this letter: whether it was sound, syllabic, or whether its individual signs expressed entire words.
Thirdly, he did not know in what direction this letter was read, in what position the text should be when reading.
Fourthly, he did not have at his disposal a single inscription in the original: he only had not always exact copies from the records of Niebuhr and Pietro della Balle, which, under the terms of the bet, Fiorillo obtained for him.
Fifthly, unlike Champollion, he did not know a single oriental language, for he was a Germanic philologist.
And finally, for cuneiform texts - at least at that stage of study - there was no Rosetta tablet, no bilingual system.
But along with these disadvantages, he also had advantages: the habit of working methodically, an interest in writing in 1799, shortly after graduating from the University of Göttingen, Grotefend published the book “On Pasigraphy, or Universal Writing” - and, finally, the desire to win a bet.
Thus, he was a man of a completely different kind than Champollion, at that time still an eleven-year-old schoolboy, and he was faced with a completely different, although no less difficult, task, and therefore he acted in a completely different way.
First, he figured out the technology of the unknown letter. Cuneiform signs had to be applied with some sharp instrument: vertical lines were drawn from top to bottom, horizontal lines from left to right, as indicated by a gradual weakening of the pressure. The lines apparently ran horizontally and began on the left, as in our method of writing, for otherwise the scribe would blur what had already been written. And they read this letter, obviously, in the same direction in which it was written. All these were fundamental discoveries, now self-evident, but for that time they were a kind of Columbus egg.
He then checked and accepted Niebuhr's assumption that this letter was “alphabetic”, since there were relatively few characters in it. He also accepted Tychsen's hypothesis that the repeated oblique element represents a dividing sign between words. And only after this Grotefend began deciphering, deciding, for lack of any other way out, to proceed not from philology, but from logic; Comparing signs with each other, determine their possible meanings.
These were inscriptions that were no different from each other, but in the inscriptions some words are often repeated: “This building was built...”, “Here lies...” In the inscriptions made at the behest of the rulers - based on the circumstances of the find, he concluded that they belonged specifically to rulers - usually at the beginning there was a name and title: “We, by the grace of God, X, king,” etc. If this assumption is correct, he told himself, then it is likely that one of these inscriptions belongs to the Persian king, because Persepolis was also the residence of the Persian kings. We know their names, albeit in the Greek version, but it cannot differ significantly from the original. Only later did it become clear that the Greek Dareios in Persian sounded Darajavaus, the Greek Xerxes - Hsyarasa. Their titles are also known: Tsar, Great Tsar. We also know that they usually put the name of their father next to their name. Then you can try the following formula: “King B, son of King A. King B, son of King B.”
Then the search began. There is no need to dwell on how he found this formula, how much patience and perseverance it took. It's not hard to imagine. Let's just say that he found it. True, in the texts it appeared in a slightly different form: “Tsar B, son of A. Tsar B, son of King B.” This means that King B was not of royal origin, since there is no royal title next to the name of his father (A). How to explain the appearance of such successors among some Persian kings? What kind of kings were these? He turned to ancient and modern historians for help... however, we’ll let him tell us about the course of his reasoning.
“It could not be Cyrus and Cambyses, since the names in the inscriptions begin with different characters. It could not have been Cyrus and Artaxerxes, because the first name is too short in relation to the number of characters in the inscription, and the second is too long. I could only assume that these were the names of Darius and Xerxes, which were so consistent with the character of the inscription that there was no need to doubt the correctness of my guess. This was also evidenced by the fact that in the son’s inscription the royal title was given, while in the father’s inscription there was no such title...”
Reading of the names of Darius, Xerxes and Hastaspes in the Persepolis inscriptions, proposed by Grotefend, and their reading today
So Grotefend revealed 12 signs, or, more precisely, 10, by solving the equation with all the unknowns!
After this, one could expect that the hitherto unknown teacher would attract the attention of the whole world, that he would be given the highest academic honors, that crowds prone to sensationalism would greet him with enthusiastic applause - after all, these ten signs were the key to the ancient Persian language, the key to all Mesopotamian cuneiform scripts and languages...
But nothing of the kind happened. It could not have been allowed to the son of a poor shoemaker, not former member Academy, to appear before the venerable scientific council of the famous Göttingen Scientific Society. However, the Scientific Society was not averse to hearing a report on his discoveries. And then Professor Tikhsen read it, read it in three sittings - so few learned men were interested in the results of the work of this “dilettante” - on September 4, October 2 and November 13, 1802. Tychsen also took care of the publication of the theses “On the question of deciphering Persepolis cuneiform texts” by Grotefend.
However, publish full text The University of Göttingen refused this work under the pretext that the author was not an orientalist. What a blessing that the fate of the electric light bulb or anti-rabies serum did not depend on these gentlemen, because Edison was also not an electrical engineer, and Pasteur was not a doctor! Only three years later a publisher was found who published Grotefend’s work as applications to “Ideas about the politics, means of transportation and trade of the largest nations” ancient world» Geerena.
Grotefend lived long enough (1775–1853) to wait for the sensational news that in 1846, under fat headlines, was distributed by the press all over the world: the cuneiform texts were read by the Englishman G. K. Rawlinson.
Egyptian writing dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. Known as hieroglyphic writing, it has been used for over 3,000 years. 
Modern scholars have obtained thousands of examples of ancient Egyptian texts. Many noble Egyptians left stories of their lives on the walls of their tombs. Spells from the Book of the Dead were carved on the walls of the tombs, which contain funerary texts that helped the pharaohs and high-ranking Egyptian officials pass on to the next world. Wealthy Egyptians could afford to hire a scribe to write down the spells of their choice. Less wealthy people had to be content with the finished text.
Inscriptions on the walls of the tombs of the warrior Ahmoz, son of Ibana, who lived in the southern city of el-Kab around 1550 BC, tell of his adventures on the battlefields:
(... I was taken on board the ship "Northerner" because I was brave. I followed the Pharaoh on foot while he rode on horseback in a chariot. When the city of Avaris was under siege, I fought bravely on His Majesty's side. I was subsequently transferred to ship "Rising in Memphis". There was a battle on the water. I made a grab and lost my hand. When my actions were reported to the king's herald, I was rewarded with gold.)
The Egyptians mastered the art of hieroglyphic writing, numbering more than 700 different characters. Hieroglyphs were used to write inscriptions on monuments, walls of temples and tombs, and to record religious texts. They could write either from left to right or from right to left. For business contracts and letters, hieratic writing was used - a cursive script with simplified writing of hieroglyphs, which was always written from right to left. 
Despite the abundance of “material” that fell into the hands of scientists, Egyptologists for many years could not read the ancient inscriptions that decorated Egyptian temples and tombs. Only in 1882 the situation changed dramatically - the French philologist Jean-François Champollion, with the help of an ancient written monument, the Rosetta Stone (found in 1799), deciphered the lost language of the Egyptians.
The stone was found near Egyptian city Rosetta. Three texts were carved on it: one on Ancient Greek and two ancient Egyptian texts - written in hieroglyphs and Egyptian demotic script. Having compared the three texts, Champol assumed that they were the same in content. Considering that the ancient Greek language was well known to philologists at that time, deciphering ancient Egyptian texts inscribed on stone was already a matter of technology.
Since childhood, Jean-François Champollion demonstrated extraordinary abilities for languages. At the age of 16, he already spoke twelve languages. At the age of twenty, Champollion was fluent in French, Latin, ancient Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Coptic, Zend, Pahlavi, Syriac, Aramaic, Farsi, Amharic, Sanskrit and Chinese.
There were more than 5000 thousand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Only about 700-800 were used in writing. The proportions of use are approximately the same as in Chinese writing. But what do we know about this ancient writing system?
I will start with the official part of the historical interpretation of this process and that modern history generally knows about deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Penetration into the history of Ancient Egypt has long been hampered by the barrier of Egyptian writing. Scientists have long tried to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. They even had at their disposal the ancient manual “Hieroglyphics,” written in the 2nd century. n. e. a native of Upper Egypt, Horapollo, and since the time of Herodotus it was known that the Egyptians used three types of writing: hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic. However, all attempts to overcome the “Egyptian letter” with the help of the works of ancient authors remained in vain.
In the study of this writing and in the decipherment of hieroglyphs he achieved the most outstanding results (1790–1832)
became the key to unraveling Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic writing.
The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite slab found in 1799 in Egypt near the small city of Rosetta (now Rashid), near Alexandria, with three identical texts engraved on it, including two in the ancient Egyptian language - inscribed in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Egyptian demotic a script that is an abbreviated cursive script of the late Egyptian era, and one in ancient Greek. Ancient Greek was well known to linguists, and the comparison of the three texts served Starting point to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The text of the stone is an inscription of gratitude, which in 196 BC. e. Egyptian priests addressed Ptolemy V Epiphanes, another monarch from the Ptolemaic dynasty. The beginning of the text: “To the new king, who received the kingdom from his father”... During the Hellenistic period, many similar documents within the Greek ecumene were distributed in the form of bi- or trilinguistic texts, which subsequently served linguists well.
The stone was discovered on July 15, 1799 by the captain of the French troops in Egypt, Pierre-François Bouchard, during the construction of Fort Saint-Julien near Rosetta on the western branch of the Nile Delta during the campaign of Napoleon's army in Egypt.
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The main obstacle in deciphering was the lack of understanding of the Egyptian writing system as a whole, therefore all individual successes did not give any “strategic” result. For example, the Englishman Thomas Young (1773–1829) was able to establish the sound meaning of the five hieroglyphic signs of the Rosetta Stone, but this did not bring science one iota closer to deciphering Egyptian writing. Only Champollion was able to solve this seemingly insoluble problem.
First of all, Champollion examined and completely rejected Horapollo's Hieroglyphics and all attempts at deciphering based on his concept. Horapollo argued that Egyptian hieroglyphs are not sound, but only semantic signs, signs-symbols. But Champollion, even before Jung’s discovery, came to the conclusion that among the hieroglyphs there were signs that convey sounds. Already in 1810, he expressed the opinion that the Egyptians could write foreign names with such phonetic signs. And in 1813, Champollion suggested that alphabetic characters were also used to convey suffixes and prefixes of the Egyptian language.
He examines the royal name “Ptolemy” on the Rosetta Stone and identifies 7 hieroglyphic letters in it. Studying a copy of the hieroglyphic inscription on the obelisk, originating from the temple of Isis on the island of Philae, he reads the name of Queen Cleopatra. As a result, Champollion determined the sound meaning of five more hieroglyphs, and after reading the names of other Greco-Macedonian and Roman rulers of Egypt, he increased the hieroglyphic alphabet to nineteen characters.
He established in the course of his research and concluded that the Egyptians had a semi-alphabetic writing system, since they, like some other peoples of the East, did not use vowels in writing. And in 1824, Champollion published his main work, “Essay on the hieroglyphic system of the ancient Egyptians.” It became the cornerstone of modern Egyptology.
Look at these hieroglyphs and their phonemes:
Doesn't it seem strange to you that certain images are passed off as phonemes? It's not even a syllabary! Why is it so difficult to depict sounds? You can depict a simple symbol and associate a sound with it, as can be seen in other peoples and cultures. But in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs there are pictures, images.
You can look at the translation, decryption, and in my opinion, deep misconception or even nonsense of Egyptologists
And Egyptologists cannot take a single step away from this! After all, all this is based on the authority of Champollion himself!
Look at this. This is a whole series of meanings, figurative writing. You can probably even say that this is a universal language that any bearer of intelligence can understand. Then the conclusion is - are we reasonable that we still cannot read this? It's my opinion. And this is a doubt in the method, where everything is based on phonetic comparisons of the imagery of hieroglyphs from the beginning of the 19th century. I got it a long time ago. Only now I decided to express it in this article.
It is quite possible that something technical is being shown here
Probably only the lazy have not heard about these technical hieroglyphs under the ceiling in one of the Egyptian temples
There are symbols here that look like aircraft, and probably more than one type.
Stones will probably be thrown at me once again, saying that I am talking nonsense and everything has long been translated. Or maybe the codebreakers were putting an owl on a globe, earning their living?
I don’t want to completely tilt everyone towards absolute forgery and misconceptions based on the works of Champollion. But it’s worth thinking about whether everything is once again as Egyptologists tell us. After all, Napoleon went to Egypt for a reason, and it is possible that the Rosetta Stone is a simple fake. Moreover, the quality and size of the inscriptions on it do not correspond to the size of the hieroglyphs of the early kingdoms of Ancient Egypt.
As an addition:
Decryption. Also a phonetic translation. Although it still has the same symbols, pictures, images
In the decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphs, the situation is the same:
But in reality, understanding these Mayan images is even more difficult than the ancient Egyptian ones
Phonetics of Aztec hieroglyphs
Deciphering ancient Egyptian texts and translating them into modern languages turned out to be quite a difficult task. Indeed, how can one read secret writings written in languages that have not been used for a long time and have become the property of history? After all, neither grammar reference books, no dictionaries ancient language scientists did not have it at their disposal.
The French scientist and linguist Jean Francois Champollion managed to reveal the secret of Egyptian hieroglyphs. He was a versatile and gifted researcher who knew several modern and ancient languages. At an early age, Champollion wondered whether it was possible to find the key to unraveling the mysterious signs that made up Egyptian writing.
The inquisitive researcher had at his disposal a massive stone slab with writing carved on it, which was discovered by French soldiers near the Egyptian city called Rosetta at the end of the 18th century. The so-called Rosetta Stone eventually became an English trophy and was taken to London, where it took pride of place as an exhibit in the British Museum.
IN early XIX century copy stone slab with hieroglyphs was delivered to the capital of France.
How Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered
Champollion began studying the written monument and found that the lower part of the text was written in Greek letters. Having an understanding of the ancient Greek language, the scientist easily restored this part of the inscription. The Greek text was about the ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy V, who reigned two hundred years before the new era.
Above the Greek text there were icons in the form of hooks, dashes, arcs and other intricate symbols. Even higher were images of figures, people and animals in combination with everyday objects. Champollion came to the conclusion that the first part of the incomprehensible text was a later Egyptian cursive script, and the upper one was the actual hieroglyphs that made up the ancient Egyptian writing.
As a starting point for deciphering, the scientist chose the assumption that all three texts of the monument communicated the same thing.
Scientist long time could not penetrate the meaning of the mysterious signs of Egyptian writing. After a long search and painful deliberation, Champollion suggested that the Egyptians in ancient times used signs that carried a semantic load simultaneously with letters. He looked for letters in proper names, which he already knew from the Greek text. The work went very slowly. Composing one word after another, the researcher gradually learned to read ancient hieroglyphs.
In September 1822, a couple of weeks after his discovery, Champollion gave a sensational report at the Paris Academy. After some time, the scientist managed to find out the contents of other ancient Egyptian texts, which contained songs and magic spells. It was during these years that new science– Egyptology.