Champollion, the Decipherer of Hieroglyphs: and the Rosetta Stone

The deciphering of hieroglyphics is one of the greatest achievements of the human race in this century. Champollion was the man who accomplished this great feat.

The key to the Egyptian writing was discovered by means of the Rosetta Stone. This valuable relic, a heavy block of black basalt, is now in the British Museum. It holds an inscription, written in hieroglyphic, in demotic, and in Greek characters. Champollion, a French scholar, by comparing the characters composing the words Ptolemy, Alexander, and other names in the parallel inscriptions, discovered the value of several of the symbols; and thus were opened the vast libraries of Egyptian learning.