This unpublished series in four episodes (1 & 2; 3 & 4) of the magazine “1:15 p.m. on Sunday” (Twitter, #1:15 p.m.), signed Patrice Brugère, Edouard Mounier and Mathilde Rougeron, look back on the extraordinary destinies of two major Egyptologists: the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) and the Briton Howard Carter (1874-1939). A century apart, their work is closely linked: the deciphering of hieroglyphs on September 14, 1822 opened the way to a new science essential to understanding the forgotten world of Egyptian Antiquity; one hundred years later, on November 4, 1922, one of the greatest archaeological events of all time occurred, the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun (born around -1345 and died around -1327).
Thanks to Champollion, his method of deciphering and his first work on the monuments of Egypt, Carter was able to discover, a century later, the prodigious treasure of the eleventh pharaoh of the XVIIIth dynasty hidden in the Valley of the Kings, on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor. The two men are brought together by the Egyptian land, both experienced and fantasized. Very early on, they had the same desire for ancient Egypt, the same thirst for adventure in the land of the pyramids, and crossed this bewitching country, according to their genius, their obsessions and the convulsions of History.
A precocious genius in linguistics and a talented draftsman
It all started in 1798 with the discovery, by Napoleon’s soldiers, of a fragment of an engraved black stele from ancient Egypt, weighing 762 kilos and bearing three versions of the same text: the Rosetta stone. Its long study by Jean-François Champollion led to the decipherment of hieroglyphs, a mystery whose elucidation was crucial for the development of Egyptology.
The French scholar, a precocious genius in linguistics, therefore achieved his ends by making understandable the texts engraved on the Rosetta Stone, now on display at the British Museum in London. His English counterpart inherited the drawing talent of his father, an animal and landscape painter. This gift opened the doors to an expedition to Egypt at only seventeen. His life then changed…
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