The Keys of Egypt: The Race to Crack the Hieroglyph
Code
Adkins, Lesley
Adkins, Roy
Perennial 2000
ISBN 0-06-095349-7
335pp
Date finished: 2004-01-13
[Buy this book] (why?)
Jean-Fran™ois Champollion's fascination with languages began early, beginning to learn Arabic, Syrian, and Chaldean when he was twelve. A few years earlier, Napoleon's troubled expedition to Egypt had brought back artifacts and illustrations, leading to a brief bout of Egyptomania in Paris salons. Decoding hieroglyphics was the most difficult goal, and many people attempted it. Some were crackpots and some, such as Champollion and his closest competitor Thomas Young, were serious researchers who expended years on the task. Champollion worked on the task on and off, distracted by financial problems and Napoleonic France's political turmoil, until in the miracle years of 1821 and 1822 he made his breakthrough and discovered how to translate various royal names.
The first chapter discusses the trials of Napoleon's expedition, and the remainder covers Champollion's life, with a closing chapter on what we've learnt from hieroglyphics and on what happened to various other actors in Champollion's life. It covers these topics competently and adequately, but nothing about the book really captured me. The sections on hieroglyphic symbols were the most interesting and I would have liked to learnt more about how the Egyptian language was reconstructed, work which continued long after Champollion's initial publications. Perhaps the discovery of hieroglyphics is a more interesting story than Champollion's life.