a scholarly and fascinating exhibition in the footsteps of the father of Egyptology

“I hold the case!”. 1822, rue Mazarine in Paris. Jean-François Champollion visits his brother Jacques-Joseph to tell him of a major discovery: he has succeeded in deciphering the first hieroglyphs inscribed on royal cartridges (those oval loops surrounding the name and first name of the pharaoh). A major step forward since it has been more than 1500 years since the meaning of these symbols has been lost, which over the centuries have become subject to the most mystical theories.

To celebrate the bicentenary of this discovery, the National Library of France (BnF) organizes until July 24 an exhibition in the footsteps of this scientist, father of Egyptology. We discover it during a visit for the press.

To retrace the scholar’s journey, the exhibition curators based themselves on the 88 volumes of notes and drawings by Champollion kept by the BnF. “His papers […] can be compared to numerous works that he himself was able to see directly in Turin, at the Louvre or in other collections such as that of the Cabinet des Antiques of the National Library. And thanks to loans,[…] we can compare and compare these documents with a view to restoring the approach of the scientist”, says at the microphone during the visit Vanessa Desclaux, one of the curators of the exhibition.

In total, more than 350 pieces – from the Prisse papyrus nicknamed the “oldest book in the world” to the sarcophagus of Padiimenipet – bring life back to a civilization that had been forgotten for more than a millennium when Champollion comes. Trace of his passage, also visible at the BnF, the sunglasses – which could be confused with those of John Lennon – which he never separated during his excavations.

Thought out thematically and not chronologically, the exhibition begins with the famous Letter to M.Dacier. When he was barely 32 years old, Jean-François Champollion published this forty-page text for the permanent secretary of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres to announce that he had just deciphered the hieroglyphs. “It is a complex system, a writing that is at the same time figurative, symbolic and phonetic, in the same text, the same sentence, I would almost say in the same word”explains Champollion in his Precis of the hieroglyphic system of the ancient Egyptians.

A revolution when we learn thanks to the exhibition that for several centuries in Europe, in the Mediterranean basin or in the Arab world, hieroglyphs are reduced to pagan and magical symbols. Behind the windows, talismans with magical inscriptions arouse the curiosity of visitors.

To begin his research, Champollion relied on monumental documentation generated by Napoleon Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt between 1798 and 1801. In 1809, the twenty-three volumes of the Description of Egypt bringing together the work of designers and scholars who accompanied the emperor are published and make it possible to make Egypt better known to France. “The Description of Egypt in 23 volumes will truly introduce the whole of Europe to Egypt as we did not know it”underlines Valérie Desclaux, turned towards the collection installed under a glass cube.

Bonaparte’s expedition brought back to France another object, key to the enigma of Egyptian writing: the Rosetta stone. Discovered in 1799 by officer Bouchard a few kilometers from Alexandria, this piece of stele has the particularity of carrying an administrative text engraved in hieroglyph (learned form), in demotic (the cursive script corresponding to the language spoken by the ancient Egyptians ) and in Greek.

Confiscated from the French by the English who beat them at Canope, the original fragment of one meter twelve high and over 700 kilos is exhibited in the British Museum. The BnF presents us with one of its reproductions. “We found a molding which is in the collections of the BnF and we found it interesting to exhibit it to give an idea of ​​the materiality of the stone, its thickness, and also to restore the text as the early Egyptologists”says Hélène Virenque, another curator surrounded by about twenty visitors who try to get closer to examine the stele more closely.

“It is often said that Egyptology is a French science thanks to this trinity: Bonaparte’s expedition which unearthed the Rosetta stone, Champollion who deciphered the hieroglyphs and then Auguste Mariette who created the Egyptian antiquities service . Three key French people who work for the rediscovery of Egypt”adds the Egyptologist.

If Champollion is so interested in this stone, it is partly thanks to his older brother, Jacques-Joseph Champollion. “Jacques-Joseph will orient, encourage Jean-François to work on the copies which had been made by French scholars when the Rosetta stone was still in Egypt and which will circulate in university academic circles in Paris and later in Europe” .

Champollion will then put the three writings in parallel. He, who is a Hellenist, will go through Greek to cut out the two other versions of the text. But that will not be enough to decipher the entire text and the polyglot finds himself hampered in his analysis.“Why don’t you translate the Greek inscription into Coptic, you who say that Coptic is the continuation of the writing of the Pharaonic language. Perhaps by passing through Coptic, you will be able to understand the structure of the language Egyptian”, suggests his older brother.

The intuition of his elder is the right one since on September 14, 1822, he manages to decipher in the text the royal cartouches of the two greatest pharaohs: Ramses and Thutmose.

“It’s moving”whispers a visitor, her gaze riveted on Champollion’s personal notebook which brings together the names and epithets of the Persian, Greek and Roman sovereigns of Egypt.

Jacques-Joseph has a fundamental importance in the posterity of the research work of his younger brother. Curator in the manuscripts department between 1828 and 1848, he succeeded in having his brother’s manuscripts acquired by the State. Documents which will join the National Library which will classify, link and bring together all the research work of the Egyptologist.

Jacques-Joseph will also see to the posthumous publication of the Egyptian Grammar, work that Champollion considers as a “calling card to posterity”, as he says himself. “And I always find it moving to see the back of this grammar where the big brother has noted the name of Champollion in a cartouche with hieroglyphic signs, as if to mark the culmination of his little brother’s work”, slips Vanessa Desclaux, her hand outstretched towards the book displayed to visitors.

After 1832, Champollion became a figure frequently taken up in popular culture, where he was represented as the decipherer par excellence. His many texts and drawings made during his travels in the Nile Valley become sources of inspiration. Paul Lormier, head of clothing at the Paris Opera from 1828 to 1875, was inspired in particular by his posthumous publications to create costumes for The Prodigal Son, an opera by Eugène Scribe. Hanging next to the reproduction of a drawing by Champollion from which he was inspired, the sketch by Paul Lormier is strikingly similar.

Seen as a kind of detective-archaeologist by children’s literature, Champollion has inspired many writers and designers. In 1950, Blake and Mortimer’s father, Edgar P. Jacobs, consulted the scholar’s works to create the screenplay for Mystery of the Great Pyramid. If he is a melancholic genius in Gérard Macé’s The last of the Egyptians, Champollion appears rather implicitly in an investigation carried out by the detectives of the series of crime novels San Antonio. The heroes find themselves in Figeac, the birthplace of the scientist and where the curator of the Champollion museum is called… Pierre Derhozaite (to be pronounced as the Rosetta stone. Are you following us?).

“The Champollion adventure. In the secret of hieroglyphs”, until July 24, 2022 – BnF I François-Mitterrand quai François-Mauriac – 75013 PARIS East entrance – Tuesday to Saturday 10 a.m. > 7 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m. > 7 p.m. Closed Monday and public holidays – Admission: 9 euros, reduced price 7 euros. Free with the BnF lecture/culture pass)