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It is one of the favorite pages of history of the French: ancient Egypt and the pharaohs. A major retrospective dedicated to François Champollion, a French scholar, to whom we owe the decipherment of hieroglyphs, is taking place in Paris.
Tourists are fascinated by the pyramids and the symbols of the vanished world of the pharaohs. At the Louvre Museum, all you have to do is go to the rooms dedicated to the cult of the dead and mummies to find the beginning of an explanation. “They are respectful of the dead, they have rites, customs and we see that it has lasted over time, it’s a lesson”, says a tourist. The Louvre collections attract 10 million visitors every year thanks to Jean-François Champollion.
From the 19ᵉ century, this scholar made Egypt fashionable, by deciphering hieroglyphs, sacred writing found in the temples of the pharaohs. “He was the one who did this pioneering work, to understand how this writing system works and to understand its grammar and to understand how a language works ultimately”, explains Vincent Rondot, director of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre Museum (Paris). To decipher this language, Champollion relies on a monolith covered by three texts. An exhibition is dedicated to him at the National Library in Paris.