14th September 2022: 200th Anniversary of Decipherment of Hieroglyphs:
“According to Hermine Hartleben, who wrote the most extensive biography of Champollion in 1906, the breakthrough came on 14 September 1822, a few days before the Lettre was written, when Champollion was examining copies made by Huyot. One cartouche from Abu Simbel contained four hieroglyphic signs. Champollion guessed, or drew on the same guess found in Young's Britannica article, that the circular first sign represented the sun. The Coptic word for "sun" was re. The sign that appeared twice at the end of the cartouche stood for "s" in the cartouche of Ptolemy. If the name in the cartouche began with Re and ended with ss, it might thus match "Ramesses", suggesting the sign in the middle stood for m.
Further confirmation came from the Rosetta Stone, where the m and s signs appeared together at a point corresponding to the word for "birth" in the Greek text, and from Coptic, in which the word for "birth" was mise. Another cartouche contained three signs, two of them the same as in the Ramesses cartouche. The first sign, an ibis, was a known symbol of the god Thoth. If the latter two signs had the same values as in the Ramesses cartouche, the name in the second cartouche would be Thothmes, corresponding to the royal name "Tuthmosis" mentioned by Manetho. These were native Egyptian kings, long predating Greek rule in Egypt, yet the writing of their names was partially phonetic.
Now Champollion turned to the title of Ptolemy found in the longer cartouches in the Rosetta Stone. Champollion knew the Coptic words that would translate the Greek text and could tell that phonetic hieroglyphs such as p and t would fit these words. From there he could guess the phonetic meanings of several more signs. Upon making these discoveries Champollion raced to his brother's office at the Académie des Inscriptions, flung down a collection of copied inscriptions, cried "Je tiens mon affaire!" ("I've done it!") and collapsed in a days-long faint.” [X]
