page_title: Jean-François Champollion
section_title: Franco-Tuscan Expedition
hierarchical_section_title: Jean-François Champollion / Franco-Tuscan Expedition
context_page_description: Jean-François Champollion, also known as Champollion le jeune, was a French scholar, philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology. A child prodigy in philology, he gave his first public paper on the decipherment of Demotic in 1806, and already as a young man held many posts of honor in scientific circles, and spoke Coptic and Arabic fluently. During the early 19th century, French culture experienced a period of 'Egyptomania', brought on by Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt during his campaign there which also brought to light the trilingual Rosetta Stone. Scholars debated the age of Egyptian civilization and the function and nature of hieroglyphic script, which language if any it recorded, and the degree to which the signs were phonetic or ideographic. Many thought that the script was only used for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical ideas, and did not record historical information.
context_section_description: In 1827, Ippolito Rosellini, who had first met Champollion during his 1826 stay in Florence, went to Paris for a year in order to improve his knowledge of the method of Champollion's system of decipherment. The two philologists decided to organize an expedition to Egypt to confirm the validity of the discovery. Headed by Champollion and assisted by Rosellini, his first disciple and great friend, the mission was known as the Franco-Tuscan Expedition, and was made possible by the support of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, and Charles X. Champollion and his second-in-command Rossellini were joined on the expedition by Charles Lenormant, representing the French government, and a team of eleven Frenchmen including the Egyptologist and artist Nestor L'Hote and Italians including the artist Giuseppe Angelelli.
  In preparation for the expedition, Champollion wrote the French Consul General Bernardino Drovetti for advice on how to secure permission from the Egyptian Khedive and Ottoman Viceroy Muhammad Ali of Egypt. Drovetti had initiated his own business of exporting plundered Egyptian antiques and did not want Champollion meddling in his affairs. He sent a letter discouraging the expedition stating that the political situation was too unstable for the expedition to be advisable. The letter reached Jacques Joseph Champollion a few weeks before the expedition was scheduled to leave, but he conveniently delayed in sending it on to his brother until after the expedition had left.
  On 21 July 1828, the expedition boarded the ship Eglé at Toulon and set sail for Egypt and they arrived in Alexandria on 18 August. Here Champollion met with Drovetti who continued to warn about the political situation but assured Champollion that the Pasha would give his permission for the expedition to proceed. Champollion, Rosselini and Lenormant met with the Pasha on 24 August, and he immediately gave his permission. However, after more than a week of waiting for the permissions, Champollion suspected that Drovetti was working against him and took a complaint to the French consulate. The complaint worked and soon the pasha provided the expedition with a large river boat. The expedition bought a small boat for five persons. Champollion named them the Isis and the Athyr after Egyptian goddesses. On 19 September, they arrived in Cairo, where they stayed until 1 October when they left for the desert sites of Memphis, Saqqara and Giza.
  While examining texts in the tombs at Saqqara in October, Champollion realized that the hieroglyphic word for "hour" included the hieroglyph representing a star, which served no phonetic function in the word. He wrote in his journal that the star glyph was "the determinative of all divisions of time". Champollion probably coined this term, replacing his phrase "signs of the type", while in Egypt, as it had not appeared in the 1828 edition of the Précis. Champollion also saw the sphinx and lamented that the inscription on its chest was covered by more sand than they would be able to remove in a week. Arriving in Dendera on 16 November, Champollion was excited to see the Zodiac that he had deciphered in Paris. Here he realized that the glyph that he had deciphered as autocrator and which convinced him that the inscription was of recent date was in fact not found on the monument itself – it had seemingly been invented by Jomard's copyist. Champollion nonetheless realized that the late date was still correct, based on other evidence. After a day at Dendera, the expedition continued on to Thebes.
  Champollion was particularly captured by the array of important monuments and inscriptions at Thebes, and decided to spend as much time there as possible on the way back north. South of Thebes, the Isis sprang a leak and nearly sank. Having lost many provisions and spent several days repairing the boat they continued south to Aswan where the boats had to be left, since they could not make it across the first Cataract. They traveled by small boats and camelback to Elephantine and Philae. At Philae, Champollion spent several days reco
caption: Champollion depicted in Egyptian dress and with a beard, in a pastel drawing made in Florence at the return from the expedition by Giuseppe Angelelli
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2007:02:28 00:34:35", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6593", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1550", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2200"}