Description

This biography of the Champollion brothers was published in Grenoble in 1887. Jean-François (1790-1832) was a child prodigy who had taught himself numerous ancient languages in his teenage years, despite not having received any formal education. Having become an assistant professor of history at Grenoble in his nineteenth year, Jean-François published a decipherment of the trilingual Rosetta Stone in 1824, thus offering the key to an understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics and consequently of the civilisation of ancient Egypt. His older brother, Jacques-Joseph (1778-1867), although a less gifted scholar, supported Jean-François and kept his name and achievement before the public after his early death. Jacques-Joseph's son Aimé-Louis (1813-94), the author of this biographical account, followed in his father's footsteps, becoming the librarian of the Bibliothèque Royale and publishing works on palaeography. Based on original letters, this is the only near-contemporary biography of the pioneering Egyptologist.