Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts

The <a href="/facts/Writing_system/ABG251A0">writing systems</a> used in <a href="/facts/Ancient_Egypt/BDsEGK4g">ancient Egypt</a> were <a href="/facts/Decipherment/NyrLgrCb">deciphered</a> in the early nineteenth century through the work of several European scholars, especially <a href="/facts/Jean-Fran%25C3%25A7ois_Champollion/6ToTWl7j">Jean-François Champollion</a> and <a href="/facts/Thomas_Young_(scientist)/X4RtR47L">Thomas Young</a>. Ancient Egyptian forms of writing, which included the <a href="/facts/Hieroglyphic/qXRpprLe">hieroglyphic</a>, <a href="/facts/Hieratic/EPUEN25f">hieratic</a> and <a href="/facts/Demotic_(Egyptian)/zADTKdn1">demotic</a> scripts, ceased to be understood in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, as the <a href="/facts/Coptic_alphabet/aTyM8QTM">Coptic alphabet</a> was increasingly used in their place. Later generations' knowledge of the older scripts was based on the work of <a href="/facts/Ancient_Greece/PTVBrWXq">Greek</a> and <a href="/facts/Ancient_Rome/cGqIuxPd">Roman</a> authors whose understanding was faulty. It was thus widely believed that Egyptian scripts were exclusively <a href="/facts/Ideographic/7NvclbIG">ideographic</a>, representing ideas rather than sounds. Some attempts at decipherment by <a href="/facts/Islamic_science/ajn0zRSc">Islamic</a> and <a href="/facts/European_science_in_the_Middle_Ages/k1IgE4WS">European</a> scholars in the <a href="/facts/Middle_Ages/RqzEKB9v">Middle Ages</a> and <a href="/facts/Early_modern_times/hhpHM721">early modern times</a> acknowledged the script might have a <a href="/facts/Phonetic/ljAVT8fv">phonetic</a> component, but perception of hieroglyphs as purely ideographic hampered efforts to understand them as late as the eighteenth century.
The <a href="/facts/Rosetta_Stone/8JLFP1NN">Rosetta Stone</a>, discovered in 1799 by members of <a href="/facts/Napoleon_Bonaparte%2527s_campaign_in_Egypt/eHgDYmmA">Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt</a>, bore a <a href="/facts/Parallel_text/aHQwRdBm">parallel text</a> in hieroglyphic, demotic and <a href="/facts/Ancient_Greek/LIK7NlUh">Greek</a>. It was hoped that the Egyptian text could be deciphered through its Greek translation, especially in combination with the evidence from the <a href="/facts/Coptic_language/EzDloWDH">Coptic language</a>, the last stage of the <a href="/facts/Egyptian_language/mSqys6jC">Egyptian language</a>. Doing so proved difficult, despite halting progress made by <a href="/facts/Antoine-Isaac_Silvestre_de_Sacy/DvxMnJr2">Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy</a> and <a href="/facts/Johan_David_%25C3%2585kerblad/odWGlJ9J">Johan David Åkerblad</a>. Young, building on their work, observed that demotic characters were derived from hieroglyphs and identified several of the phonetic signs in demotic. He also identified the meaning of many hieroglyphs, including phonetic <a href="/facts/Glyphs/A7Gesbxj">glyphs</a> in a <a href="/facts/Cartouche/RuegmyFU">cartouche</a> containing the name of an Egyptian king of foreign origin, <a href="/facts/Ptolemy_V/XMjDNkMI">Ptolemy V</a>. He was convinced, however, that phonetic hieroglyphs were used only in writing non-Egyptian words. In the early 1820s Champollion compared Ptolemy's cartouche with others and realised the hieroglyphic script was a mixture of phonetic and ideographic elements. His claims were initially met with scepticism and with accusations that he had taken ideas from Young without giving credit, but they gradually gained acceptance. Champollion went on to roughly identify the meanings of most phonetic hieroglyphs and establish much of the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Egyptian. Young, meanwhile, largely deciphered demotic using the Rosetta Stone in combination with other Greek and demotic parallel texts.
Decipherment efforts languished after Young and Champollion died, but in 1837 <a href="/facts/Karl_Richard_Lepsius/bK63eepJ">Karl Richard Lepsius</a> pointed out that many hieroglyphs represented combinations of two or three sounds rather than one, thus correcting one of the most fundamental faults in Champollion's work. Other scholars, such as <a href="/facts/Emmanuel_de_Roug%25C3%25A9/WgXn4pCp">Emmanuel de Rougé</a>, refined the understanding of Egyptian enough that by the 1850s it was possible to fully translate ancient Egyptian texts. Combined with the <a href="/facts/Decipherment_of_cuneiform/MgIQoGu8">decipherment of cuneiform</a> at approximately the same time, their work opened up the once-inaccessible texts from early stages of human history.

Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts open-in-new

Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts