I wish to make of this ancient nation a
thorough and continual study. The enthusiasm with which
the description of its vast monuments transports me,
the admiration with which its power and its
knowledge fill me, are sure to increase with the
new ideas that I shall acquire. Of all the peoples whom
I admire the most, I shall confess to you that not one of them
outweighs the Egyptians in my heart!
(letter from Jean-François Champollion to his parents, probably June 1807)
In the summer of 1806, the mayor of Grenoble, Renauldon, overheard his schoolboy son having a serious discussion about botany with his friend Champollion. The mayor asked the 15-year-old Jean-François if he intended to specialize in the natural sciences. ‘No, Monsieur,’ he replied solemnly. ‘I wish to devote my life to knowledge of ancient Egypt.’ By the time Champollion left his lycée a year or so later, there can be no doubt that he, his brother and his close contemporaries knew that penetrating the mysteries of Egyptian civilization was going to be the dominant passion of his life. What is not so clear, however, is how Champollion first encountered and embraced Egypt, and exactly when this happened, though it must have taken place between his arrival from Figeac in the spring of 1801 and his departure from Grenoble for Paris to study Oriental languages in the autumn of 1807.
If we are to believe the celebrated legend created by his devoted first biographer, Champollion experienced a sort of eureka moment before his twelfth birthday. It occurred ‘in the autumn of 1802’, according to Hartleben, in the following way. Some time after Joseph Fourier’s arrival in Grenoble in April 1802 to take up his new appointment as prefect of Isère, he was visiting various educational establishments when he met the 11-year-old Jean-François. After a short conversation the scientist–prefect, seeing the boy’s zeal for all aspects of the ancient world, issued a thrilling invitation: to come and see his private collection of Egyptian antiquities kept at the prefecture.
Portrait of Joseph Fourier, prefect of Isère, mathematician, physicist and Egyptologist, who played a key role in the introduction of the young Champollion to ancient Egypt.
(Lithograph of Joseph Fourier by Julien-Leopold Boilly. Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
Some months went by while the prefect got to grips with the complexities of his new position. Then the appointed hour arrived for the visit of the young admirer. ‘But on entering the prefecture, [Champollion] was struck with such fear that the questions of the savant could not draw him out of a respectful silence,’ writes Hartleben:
This only made him more attentive in listening to everything that the prefect was saying about Egypt; his excitement increased still further when his host showed him several hieroglyphic inscriptions on stone, as well as some fragments of papyrus, and his joyful admiration at last made him recover his habitual animation.
Fourier immediately explained to him the meaning of the zodiac [in the ancient Egyptian temple of Dendera], undoubtedly in the accepted manner of his time and without suspecting that exactly twenty years later (in September 1822) the 11-year-old boy then standing beside him would provide the definitive solution to this enigma. Struck by the precocity of his small guest, the prefect gave him advance authorization to come to the ‘intimate soirées’ that he intended to organize, so as to enable physical experiments and the latest discoveries to be studied by a group of handpicked specialists. François left the presence of his noble patron in deep happiness and he maintained many times afterwards that at the time of this first visit to Fourier he had experienced not only an ardent desire to be able to decipher the writing of ancient Egypt one day, but also the conviction that he would attain this goal.
It is an irresistible story of a child prodigy, full of charm and romance, which was touchingly dramatized in Carl Sagan’s award-winning 1980s television series Cosmos. Since Hartleben’s time several other writers on Champollion have been seduced by it, and have respectfully described the Fourier–Champollion encounter: Lesley and Roy Adkins in The Keys of Egypt, for example, published in 2000, and even the historians of science Jed Z. Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz, in their academic study The Zodiac of Paris, published in 2010. The latter pair write of Fourier: ‘He invited the boy to visit him at the prefecture, where he explained the significance of the Egyptian zodiac to the no doubt awed youngster, which indicates how much the issue was on Fourier’s mind for months after his return from Egypt.’
Sadly for lovers of a good story, however, this one as told by Hartleben is almost certainly false, although it probably contains some elements of what really transpired between Champollion and Fourier. The historical evidence is firmly against such a fateful meeting. In the first place, contrary to Hartleben’s claim, Champollion never once mentioned a schoolboy epiphany involving Fourier in any of his letters or published writings, and it was never alluded to in the memoirs of his friends and collaborators. Nor was it mentioned by his elder brother Champollion-Figeac, who was close to Fourier for much of his tenure as prefect, and who after the latter’s death wrote a book about Fourier, Napoleon and Egypt. Nor did Fourier himself refer to it, though he did later on describe Champollion as ‘a fiery colt demanding a triple ration’.
There is also no trace in the historical archives of Isère of such a visit by Champollion around 1802, despite searches made by sceptical biographers such as Lacouture and Faure. The earliest definite reference to a tête-à-tête between Fourier and Champollion le jeune comes as late as July 1809, in a letter from Jacques-Joseph encouraging his brother to visit the prefect – apparently for the first time, though this is not quite certain from Jacques-Joseph’s phrasing (and 1809 seems surprisingly late for their first private meeting). ‘There is no reason that this visit should annoy you,’ writes Jacques-Joseph to Jean-François. ‘M. Fourier is an excellent man, as good as he is kind. He is as Egyptian as you, he likes you because he knows your tastes and your works, and, let this be entre nous, he thinks better of you than of many of the members of the [Egyptian] Commission. You will be delighted to make his acquaintance in private.’
Also significant is the fact that Champollion-Figeac probably did not know Fourier as early as 1802, so he could not have had any intermediary role in a meeting between the prefect and his brother at that time. The first correspondence between Champollion-Figeac and Fourier dates from October 1803. Moreover, during most of 1802 Jean-François was actually not studying at school: he was receiving tuition in private, and joined Abbé Dussert’s institution only in November. So how could Fourier have met the boy on a school visit in mid-1802, as claimed by Hartleben?
Historical evidence aside, a private meeting between Fourier and an un-known schoolboy in 1802 seems psychologically implausible for a recently appointed prefect with pressing commitments to the running of his department. In addition Fourier, a well-known mathematician and physicist, is known to have taken up his surprising political appointment with great reluctance and purely at Napoleon’s insistence; he feared that, residing in far-off Grenoble, he would be totally forgotten in Paris as a scientist. It is doubtful, therefore, that Fourier would have invested time in unnecessary meetings in Grenoble as early as 1802. (Incidentally, today there is a respected scientific institution in Grenoble, the Joseph Fourier University, the nucleus of which was founded by Fourier in 1811.)
More likely than a meeting à deux in 1802, it would seem, is that Champollion may have been a member of a school group from the lycée invited to the prefecture some time in 1804–6 to see the Egyptian antiquities, to whom Fourier offered a guided tour. Still more likely, Jacques-Joseph might have asked Fourier’s permission to bring his brother along to one of the soirées held at the prefecture during the same period, where Jean-François would have been able to see the antiquities and perhaps hear about them from Fourier in the attentive presence of his elder brother.
This is a convincing thesis for a number of reasons. From late 1803, Champollion-Figeac, then a newly elected member of the Society of Arts and Sciences, began researching Roman inscriptions at Fourier’s request, and the two men formed a working relationship. In June 1804, Champollion-Figeac sent a scholarly communication to the society about the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone, which demonstrates his own growing interest in Egypt. The following year, with the help of a bibliophile friend, Champollion-Figeac was able to provide Fourier with an invaluable gift: the correspondence of the great mathematician Leonhard Euler, which a grateful Fourier himself presented in a paper read to the society. In 1806, Champollion-Figeac sent a second communication to the society, about the Greek inscriptions in the temple of Dendera, and this was formally addressed to Fourier. Throughout the period from 1804 onwards, Champollion-Figeac, privately helped by his younger brother, also gave Fourier crucial unofficial assistance as he undertook demanding research for his prestigious ‘historical preface’ to the first volume of the government’s Description de l’Égypte. This publication was based on the work of the savants in the Egyptian Commission, including, of course, Fourier himself. Given these various and close connections between Champollion-Figeac and Fourier, what could have been more natural than for Jacques-Joseph to have brought his schoolboy brother to a soirée at the prefecture on an evening when a discussion of Egypt was scheduled?
Thus, rather than having a eureka moment with Fourier, Champollion must have developed his passion for Egypt somewhat more gradually, as a result of exploring the books on Egypt in his brother’s library as he helped his research. In all probability this exploration began in 1803–4, at the time when Jean-François started to study Oriental languages and before he became a boarder at the detested lycée. One day at home in his brother’s lodgings, as reported by Hartleben, he got hold of various books by ancient authorities such as Herodotus, Strabo and Diodorus, and enthusiastically tore out the pages from each one that seemed particularly informative about ancient Egypt. He spread them out in front of him and was about to plunge into a comparison when a cry of astonishment from his elder brother made him jump up. Only then did he realize his offence. But instead of roundly scolding him for the sacrilege, his brother in fact gave him a hug and made him promise to pursue his study of ancient Egypt with all possible assiduousness. Champollion’s first ever published paper, the one written in 1804 examining the possible Egyptian roots of ancient Greek myths about giants, may have been an early outcome of his promise.
At this novice stage, Champollion’s fascination for ancient Egypt seems to have been broadly focused, covering its art and history, its geography and natural history, its language and literature, and its religion and science. No doubt he was enthused by the early contributions of savants to the Description de l’Égypte, as the papers were submitted to Fourier during 1805 and subsequently passed across the desk of his elder brother in the course of his research for Fourier. Thanks to the prefect, Jean-François was able to look at a reproduction of the Rosetta Stone in 1804. The following year, he studied for the first time the faithful and detailed drawings of the current state of the country, including its ancient monuments, in the two entrancing volumes that described Denon’s travels in Upper and Lower Egypt. Champollion’s breadth of interest in Egypt would remain undimmed until his death, as is evident from the diary of his own Egyptian voyage, which speaks as much of nature and human life beside the Nile as it does of ancient tombs and temples. But within a year or two of his initial flush of excitement, he realized that he would have to focus on the Egyptian language and script if he were to make real progress in understanding the civilization as a whole.
A key moment – which can be dated fairly precisely, to June 1805 – was a meeting Fourier arranged at his house. A guest with Egyptian connections had come from Paris to stay briefly with the prefect; this was Dom Raphaël de Monachis, a senior Greek Catholic priest. Born Rufa’il Zakkur in Egypt, Monachis had lived in Syria, studied in Rome and acted as a cultural adviser to the French expedition in Egypt, where he had become friends with Fourier. In 1803, in gratitude for services rendered, Napoleon had appointed Monachis assistant professor of Arabic at the Special School of Oriental Languages in Paris.
From the professor–priest Jean-François obtained a manual of the Arabic dialect spoken in Egypt and started to learn the language for himself. In conversation with Monachis, he also began to grasp the importance of two other vernacular languages of Egypt, Coptic and Ethiopic, and their scripts. The three scripts – Arabic, Coptic and Ethiopic, belonging to the three most important languages spoken in the Nile Valley – might each be essential in elucidating the language of ancient Egypt, Champollion dimly perceived. Monachis knew enough Coptic to help his young companion get started on its study before he returned to Paris. With the help of published Coptic grammars such as Athanasius Kircher’s, the language quickly became one of Champollion’s favourites. Later, as a student in Paris, he would become convinced that Coptic should form the basis of his attempt to understand the ancient Egyptian language.
Studying Kircher’s writings led him inevitably to the ancient source of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphika, which Kircher had fancifully interpreted. At this point, Champollion was far from being critically aware of the unreliability of both these authors. Returning again and again to old Horapollo, he wrote a mass of notes on ‘the symbolic signs of the Egyptians’. This was perhaps the first of dozens of digressions and blind alleys that he would follow over the next decade and a half of trial-and-error decipherment.
Mainly, however, Champollion concentrated on learning those Oriental languages that might serve to promote his Egyptian studies. During the summer holidays of 1806, for instance, while staying with a cousin, he wrote ‘a little treatise on Hebraic numismatics of around 20 pages’. In the same break from school, he practised his translation skills on the biblical book of Exodus, studied the works of Arab geographers and wrote a commentary on the worship of Isis.
In a similar spirit, at the start of 1807 he began to edit a map of Egypt and to compile a ‘geographical dictionary of the Orient’ with particular reference to the Nile Valley. His general idea was to use the historical sources written in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Coptic, Hebrew and other Oriental languages to try to rediscover original ancient place names. The place names in contemporary use dated back to the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, and were presumably in many cases phonetic imitations of the names Egyptians used in the Greco-Roman period, which must, in turn, have derived from their ancient Egyptian names. From the midst of this research at the lycée, Jean-François wrote to his brother:
Would you have the kindness to ask M. de La Salette for the first volume of the Bibliothèque orientale. It is a book I wish to read and that one cannot consult too much in order to keep to the right path in this maze of Oriental dynasties, and besides it is only there that one can familiarize oneself with the Oriental names and furnish one’s memory with knowledge that is entirely necessary for someone who is destined to make a special study of Orientals.
It was this research that culminated in the paper he addressed to the Society of Arts and Sciences in September 1807. Entitled ‘Essay on the geographical description of Egypt before the conquest of Cambyses’, it focused on the country before the Persian invasion in the 6th century BC. The map of Egypt he had created was given to the society.
Since the previous year, following enquires made by Jacques-Joseph to his scholarly contacts, it had been settled that, after leaving school, Jean-François would go on to study Oriental languages in Paris. He would receive financial support from his brother and the active assistance of the prefect Fourier and his connections in the capital. On 17 June 1807, probably at the dictation of Jacques-Joseph, Jean-François wrote formally to his parents asking for their permission – a letter part-quoted at the beginning of this chapter, which spelt out his commitment to the study of Egypt beyond any doubt. But before the letter could reach Figeac, his ailing mother died, on 19 June. Rather than visiting their widowed father in Figeac, the two brothers arranged to meet him at the Beaucaire Fair in July. So far as is known, Jacques Champollion fell in easily with the future plans of his eldest and youngest sons.
In the meantime, on 1 July 1807, Jacques-Joseph, who was now in his late twenties, married Zoé Berriat of Grenoble. At one time he had apparently considered marrying for advantage, but in the event he married chiefly for love, with the encouragement of his young brother. His bride’s dowry was a country house at Vif, a beautiful commune just south of Grenoble, where she and her husband would now live. Theirs would prove a happy marriage, and for Jean-François something of a blessing in a life that had thus far been signally lacking in parental affection. He and his sister-in-law quickly established a natural, teasing relationship. On the morning of the wedding, she joked that he should consider whitening his brown skin for the ceremony. She also insisted that he change his family nickname from ‘Cadet’, French for ‘youngest’, to ‘Seghir’, an Arabic word of similar meaning. From now on this would be his name within the family.
In mid-September, about two weeks after leaving school and delivering his well-received paper to the Society of Arts and Sciences, Champollion le jeune set off for Paris by diligence, accompanied by Champollion-Figeac. He was not yet 17 years old and was hardly heard of outside Grenoble. By the time he returned to the city two years later, he would be widely recognized as a prodigy and already entitled to call himself ‘Professor’.