| Page 297 | |
References
Lister, Robert H., and Florence C. Lister. 1981. Archaeology and Archaeologists: Chaco Canyon. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Ortiz, Alfonso, vol. ed. 1979. Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest, Volume 9. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
(1790–1832)
Although he was to gain lasting fame as the person most responsible for the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics, Champollion was famous long before Egypt. By the age of 16 he could speak and read six ancient oriental languages, in addition to Latin and Greek, and at 19 he became a professor of history at the university in Grenoble in France.
Jean-François Champollion
(Ann Ronan Picture Library)
The initial breakthrough in understanding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics was the result of a study of the Rosetta Stone by a young English physicist, Thomas Young. The stone had been seized from the defeated French army in Egypt and presented by George III to the british museum. It was Young who realized that the stone was engraved with three versions of the same text—one in Greek, one in demotic Egyptian, and the last in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Champollion built on Young’s work and took it further still, establishing an entire list of hieroglyphic signs and their Greek equivalents. Champollion recognized that some of the hieroglyphs were alphabetic, some were syllabic, and some were determinative, i.e., standing for a whole idea or object previously expressed. While his theories were bitterly disputed by other scholars at the time, this fundamental classification proved to be the key to understanding and translating this ancient writing system and contributed to the recognition of the study of linguistics as a scientific discipline.
Champollion became curator of the Egyptian collection at the louvre in 1826, conducting an archaeological expedition to Egypt in 1828. In 1831 the chair of Egyptian Antiquities was created especially for him at the College de France. In addition to an Egyptian grammar (1836– 1841) and an Egyptian dictionary (1842–1843), his works included Précis du système hiéroglyphique in 1824 and Panthéon égyptien ou collection des personnages mythologiques de l’ancienne Egypt in 1823–1825.
See also
Egypt: Dynastic; French Archaeology in Egypt and the Middle East
Chan Chan, the capital of the Chimú state, is located in the Moche Valley of peru near the modern city of Trujillo. Excavation of Chan Chan was begun in 1969 by Michael Moseley and Carol J. Mackey and continues under the Peruvian Instituto Nacional de Cultura. The site is believed to have been established around a.d. 850 and to have continued to flourish until the Inca conquest in about 1470. It grew prodigiously during its 600-year history, spreading to over twenty square kilometers. Unfortunately, Chan Chan has been badly affected by looting.
References
Moseley, Michael E., and Kent C. Day, eds. 1982. Chan Chan: Andean Desert City. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
| |