The Riddle of the Rosetta by Jed Z. Buchwald

Author:Jed Z. Buchwald [Buchwald, Jed Z.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691200910
Google: RdXXDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 54313278
Published: 2020-06-30T05:50:55+00:00

chap ter 20

A B A N D O N I NG

T H E A L PH A B E T AT

G R E N OB L E

Despite his extensive work on the Egyptian dictionary and grammar, Cham-

pollion seems to have done nothing of substance about the Egyptian (demotic)

text of the Rosetta inscription from 1808 until the autumn of 1814 when he had

sent the Royal Society a copy of his Pharaons.1 Some time thereafter Champol-

lion began working directly with the demotic. In a letter to Thévenet written

on July 18, 1816, while still in Figeac, Champollion asked him to send, from

Grenoble, a set of papers left behind in the exodus of the preceding year. These

papers comprised the engraving he had of the Rosetta “Egyptian and Greek

inscription,” as well as a poor copy of the Vetusta hieroglyphs, together with

his notes on demotic.2 When he returned to Grenoble in the autumn of 1816,

Champollion still lacked a copy of the superior Description engraving, which

had only recently been printed, based on the cast taken from the stone in

London by Jomard in 1815.3 If only he had a copy of the Description’s plate,

Champollion lamented in a letter to his brother, he would be able “to place

beneath each hieroglyph the corresponding French word and even the Egyp-

tian cursive.” This work, he claimed, was “three- fourths finished” despite the

lack of a clear and complete print. By June 1818, Champollion fi nally possessed

two good copies of the Rosetta inscriptions: one that Jollois, managing editor

of the Description, possessed and one of the Description plates.4

With this material at last available, Champollion began an extensive divi-

sion of the hieroglyphs into semantic equivalents, bracketed with what he took

to be the corresponding demotic, together with a list of putative alphabetic

signs for demotic that was clearly based on Åkerblad’s work.5 It is likely that

he undertook the division in part because he had read Young’s “interpreta-

tion” of the hieroglyphic text in the Archaeologia and was certain he could

do better. As he perfected an alphabet for the demotic via links to Coptic

equivalents, he produced a list of the meanings of specific words (fig. 20.1). 6

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.