NOTES AND REFERENCES
Since this book is not intended to be a full biography, only occasional notes are given, citing full references for the quotations in the text. The translations from sources in French are my own, except for the quotations from a few books and articles published in English translation, which are listed in the Bibliography.
Hyperlinked page numbers refer to the 2012 print edition of this title.
PROLOGUE: EGYPTOMANIA
9 ‘singular combination’ Quoted in Reeves and Wilkinson: 59. For a discussion of the influential Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, see Curl: 260–64. It was demolished in 1905, and in 2011 its supposed statues of Isis and Osiris were languishing incongruously on either side of a lift shaft in the underground car park of the Museum of London.
10 ‘The first person I met’ Quoted in A New Description of Sir John Soane’s Museum: 48–49.
11 ‘It is the first time that hieroglyphics’ Belzoni: 205–6. Young’s discussion of Psammis, Psammuthis and Psammetichus appears in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 154.
12 ‘one of the most fascinating books’ Carter and Mace, vol. 1: 68.
I HIEROGLYPHIC ‘DELIRIUM’ BEFORE CHAMPOLLION
15 ‘hieroglyphic writing, hitherto regarded’ Champollion, Précis (1824): 249.
15 ‘tourists’ Ray, Reflections of Osiris: 5–6.
17 ‘not built up from syllables’ Quoted in Horapollo: 101.
17 ‘puerile’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 267.
17 ‘When they wish to indicate’ Horapollo: 63.
18 ‘sometimes called the last’ Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edn: entry for ‘Kircher, Athanasius’.
18 ‘the last man who knew’ Subtitle of the book by Findlen. For a discussion of Kircher and Coptic, see Chapter 12 of Hamilton; Champollion’s opinion of Kircher appears on page 218.
18 ‘The protection of Osiris’ Quoted in Pope: 31–32.
21 ‘The peculiar nature’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 269.
22 ‘notae phoneticae’ Pope: 58.
22 ‘Every relic of antiquity’ Denon, vol. 2: 241–42.
23 ‘There appears no doubt’ Quoted in Downs: 81.
25 ‘Taken from the French army’ Leclant: 748. Downs discusses the conflicting accounts of the British acquisition of the Rosetta Stone.
25 ‘This decree’ Quoted in Andrews: 28.
26 ‘[They] proceeded upon’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 270.
II A REVOLUTIONARY CHILDHOOD
29 ‘No genius’ Quoted in Lacouture: 38.
32 ‘Those who had most grounds’ Ballard: 18.
34 ‘Outbursts, renunciations’ Lacouture: 53.
34 ‘volcanic temperament’ Hartleben: 43.
35 ‘Wicked stick!’ Quoted in Hartleben: 43.
35 ‘Fortunately, I was given’ Quoted in Hartleben: 44.
35 ‘his first work of decipherment’ Hartleben: 44.
36 ‘We can feel the yawns’ Ballard: 212.
37 ‘If I have any regret’ Quoted in Lacouture: 59.
37 ‘particular genius’ Quoted in Hartleben: 49. For a discussion of the education of geniuses, see my Sudden Genius?, especially Chapter 17.
37 ‘He has plenty of taste’ Quoted in Lacouture: 50.
37 ‘very dear brother’ Quoted in Lacouture: 51.
38 ‘Since you have confessed’ Quoted in Lacouture: 52.
38 ‘Our house is no longer’ Quoted in Hartleben: 50.
38 ‘I was, by turns’ Quoted in Faure: 773.
III RELUCTANT SCHOOLBOY
39 ‘The deputy head’ Quoted in Lacouture: 81–82.
39 ‘I am always’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 183.
40 ‘All that is base … a subtlety’ Quoted in Lacouture: 69.
41 ‘pompous, cunning and venal’ Lacouture: 67.
41 ‘His ordinary work’ Quoted in Lacouture: 73.
42 ‘I take care to look for’ Quoted in Lacouture: 73–74.
42 ‘chronology from Adam’ Quoted in Hartleben: 58.
42 ‘It is without doubt rather singular’ Quoted in Hartleben: 60.
44 ‘There is, every day, a period’ Quoted in Lacouture: 77.
45 ‘Being too young to judge’ Quoted in Hartleben: 63.
45 ‘Send me a little money’ Quoted in Hartleben: 64.
46 ‘whom I have loved with my heart’ Quoted in Lacouture: 85.
46 ‘the young J.-F. Champollion’ Quoted in Hartleben: 68–69.
47 ‘I beg you to be so kind’ Quoted in Hartleben: 66.
48 ‘what is known as a switchback’ Lacouture: 79.
48 ‘In naming you’ Quoted in Dewachter: 25.
IV EGYPT ENCOUNTERED
49 ‘I wish to make’ Quoted in Lacouture: 91.
49 ‘No, Monsieur’ Quoted in Lacouture: 92.
49 ‘in the autumn of 1802’ Hartleben: 55.
50 ‘But on entering … attain this goal.’ Ibid: 55–56.
51 ‘He invited the boy’ Buchwald and Josefowicz: 186.
51 ‘a fiery colt’ Quoted in Buchwald and Josefowicz: 186. Fourier’s English biographer, John Herivel, makes no reference to Fourier’s anecdotal encounter with the boy Champollion in 1802.
51 ‘There is no reason that’ Quoted in Lacouture: 90.
54 ‘the symbolic signs’ Quoted in Hartleben: 71.
55 ‘a little treatise’ Quoted in Lacouture: 93.
55 ‘Would you have the kindness’ Quoted in Lacouture: 93.
V PARIS AND THE ROSETTA STONE
57 ‘You think to terrify me’ Quoted in Lacouture: 124.
57 ‘The air of Paris’ Quoted in Lacouture: 117.
58 ‘Here I look like a sans-culotte’ Quoted in Hartleben: 95.
58 ‘the caverns of Ali Baba’ Lacouture: 102.
58 ‘I think there are few’ Sir William Gell in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 431–32. Gell does not name his ‘very learned friend’.
59 ‘On Mondays’ Quoted in Lacouture: 114.
61 ‘the most perfect’ Quoted in Dewachter: 31.
62 ‘He began to make his salaam’ Quoted in Hartleben: 81.
63 ‘As for M. de Sacy’ Quoted in Dewachter: 29.
64 ‘Jomard considered him’ Solé and Valbelle: 56.
65 ‘I do not have a great respect’ Quoted in Hartleben: 117.
65 ‘He was a virulent polemicist’ Lacouture: 125.
65 ‘You have read a line and a half’ Quoted in Lacouture: 124.
66 ‘I am afraid that our efforts … Greek text.’ Quoted in Solé and Valbelle: 57.
67 ‘I have read a line and a half’ Quoted in Lacouture: 123.
67 ‘The Etruscans occupy me’ Quoted in Lacouture: 123.
VI TEENAGE PROFESSOR
69 ‘The natural tendency of the human mind’ Quoted in Hartleben: 108.
69 ‘the cradle of his thought process’ Lacouture: 145.
70 ‘intellectuel engagé’ Ibid: 140.
70 ‘The double object of education … love themselves…’ Quoted in Lacouture: 143.
71 ‘Sophocles and Euripides’ Quoted in Hartleben: 108.
71 ‘One can see that our pedagogue’ Faure: 147.
72 ‘I do not think he ought to attach himself’ Quoted in Hartleben: 112.
72 ‘with ardour’ Quoted in Hartleben: 112.
73 ‘The result of all that we have said’ Quoted in Lacouture: 157.
73 ‘if these hieroglyphs did not have’ Quoted in Solé and Valbelle: 59.
73 ‘abbreviated symbols’ Quoted in Lacouture: 155.
75 ‘the ape-head lid is slightly blackened’ Adkins and Adkins: 103.
75 ‘In the bain-marie’ Quoted in Hartleben: 121.
76 ‘I am always working’ Quoted in Lacouture: 161.
77 ‘In the hieroglyphs, there are two sorts’ Quoted in Solé and Valbelle: 60.
77 ‘It is my conviction’ Quoted in Lacouture: 161.
77 ‘The first step to be taken’ Quoted in Solé and Valbelle: 61.
79 ‘a terrible pleasure’ Quoted in Lacouture: 64.
79 ‘above all in the least well-lit streets’ Hartleben: 136.
79 ‘I do not recognize you’ Quoted in Lacouture: 165.
VII THE RACE BEGINS
80 ‘M. Silvestre de Sacy, my former professor’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 66.
81 ‘In France we hardly know’ Faure: 192.
81 ‘was to light what Joseph Fourier was’ Lacouture: 267. Like Lacouture, the Egyptologist Christian Jacq stereotypes Young’s English background and character in his novel Champollion the Egyptian, supplying Young with a non-existent aristocratic niece, ‘Lady Ophelia Redgrave’, who travels to Egypt and shadows Champollion as a spy and would-be lover.
81 ‘passed through life’ Ibid: 273.
83 ‘fortunately for our subject’ Ray, ‘The name of the first’.
83 ‘could not bear’ Gurney: 46.
83 ‘for employing some poor Italian’ Quoted in Peacock: 451.
84 ‘your Society’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 63.
85 ‘conjectural translation’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 16.
85 ‘in which he asserted’ Ibid: 264.
85 ‘my Egyptian researches began’ Ibid: 264.
86 ‘those who have not been in the habit’ Ibid: 612.
86 ‘It is impossible to form’ Peacock: 281.
88 ‘striking resemblance’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 54.
88 ‘I discovered, at length’ Ibid: 275.
88 ‘I am not surprised that’ Ibid: 53.
89 ‘it seemed natural to suppose’ Ibid: 133.
90 ‘it is impossible that all the characters’ Ibid: 55–56.
VIII NAPOLEON AND CHAMPOLLION
92 ‘There is no law of succession’ Quoted in Hartleben: 142.
92 ‘I certainly have more confidence’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 17.
92 ‘That is how men are’ Quoted in Hartleben: 131.
93 ‘If I might venture to advise you’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 51. This notorious advice by de Sacy is not referred to by Solé and Valbelle in their account of the hieroglyphic decipherment – presumably because it would not reflect well on either de Sacy or Champollion.
93 ‘I do not intend to speak further’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 59.
94 ‘Long live the Emperor’ J. J. Champollion-Figeac, Fourier et Napoléon: 205. Champollion himself never wrote about his personal encounter with Napoleon, even in his letters.
94 ‘In a career conducted’ Lacouture: 173.
94 ‘It’s a good sign’ J. J. Champollion-Figeac, Fourier et Napoléon: 216–17.
94 ‘He got up, came towards me’ Ibid: 217–18.
96 ‘This word made a visible impression’ Ibid: 229.
96 ‘They had been working on that’ Ibid: 230.
105 ‘Bring it all to Paris’ Ibid: 232.
105 ‘balance sheet of advantages’ Ibid: 310–11.
105 ‘The prevailing atmosphere’ Price: 83.
106 ‘1. The certainty of a solid’ Quoted in Lacouture: 188.
106 ‘M. Blanc has always said’ Ibid.
107 ‘dangerous men … knowledge’ Quoted in Lacouture: 190.
107 ‘where the name of Bonaparte’ Quoted in Lacouture: 191.
107 ‘Messieurs Champollion are both remarkable’ Quoted in Lacouture: 193.
IX EXILE AND REVOLT
109 ‘Perhaps one day, the capture’ Quoted in Aimé Champollion-Figeac: 53. For a discussion of this incident, see Faure: 406.
110 ‘I have not a single letter’ Quoted in Lacouture: 198.
111 ‘One finds scarcely four or five people’ Quoted in Lacouture: 202.
111 ‘I am a Dauphinois’ Quoted in Lacouture: 201.
111 ‘foolishly sleepy’ Quoted in Faure: 282.
111 ‘not a single danger’ Quoted in Lacouture: 196–97.
113 ‘several inhabitants’ Quoted in Lacouture: 211.
113 ‘As for the Rabbi’ Quoted in Lacouture: 213.
113 ‘Provided he eats’ Quoted in Lacouture: 215.
114 ‘It will not be enough for them’ Quoted in Lacouture: 216.
114 ‘The departure of my brother has’ Quoted in Faure: 295.
115 ‘It gives me as much credit’ Quoted in Lacouture: 216.
115 ‘he certainly has picked out’ Quoted in Peacock: 264.
116 ‘my ex-cabinet’ Quoted in Lacouture: 217.
118 ‘I would rather be the first’ Quoted in Faure: 343.
118 ‘During this period of reflection’ Solé and Valbelle: 76.
119 ‘The square block and the semicircle’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 156–57.
120 ‘In all he was able to equate’ Andrews: 15. For a sign-by-sign critical assessment of Young’s vocabulary, see Sottas’s preface to the centenary edition of the Lettre à M. Dacier: 12–15.
120 ‘mixed up with many false conclusions’ Griffith: 65.
122 ‘I have the satisfaction’ Belzoni: 205.
122 ‘The Englishman knows’ Champollion, Champollion inconnu: 65. Unfortunately, no date is given for Champollion’s letter to his brother.
123 ‘is no more than a simple modification’ Quoted in Solé and Valbelle: 76. Strange to say, given the history of Champollion’s 1821 publication, even the British Library’s copy has gone missing, despite an exhaustive search by the curator in charge of early printed books in French during the research for my book.
123 ‘striking resemblance’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 54.
123 ‘imitations of the hieroglyphics’ Ibid: 54.
124 ‘disastrous’ Hartleben: 186.
124 ‘I would like to give myself up’ Quoted in Hartleben: 179.
126 ‘Pitiless fate has arrested me’ Quoted in Hartleben: 192.
X BREAKTHROUGH
127 ‘Hieroglyphic writing is a complex system’ Champollion, Précis (1824): 327.
129 ‘I hope it is not too rash’ Champollion, Lettre à M. Dacier: 1; Champollion, Précis (1828): 41.
130 ‘Today Champollion le jeune’ Aimé Champollion-Figeac: 78.
131 ‘Had he been candid enough’ Hincks, ‘An attempt to ascertain’: 134.
131 ‘No one could learn anything’ Renouf, ‘Young and Champollion’: 196. Renouf, unlike his more distinguished and original friend Edward Hincks, was consistently dismissive of Young’s contribution to the hieroglyphic decipherment from the beginning of his Egyptological career in the 1850s. However, he was provoked into writing his 1896 polemic, ‘Young and Champollion’, not by Young’s own writings but by the strong support for Young against Champollion of the controversial and prolific Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge in an essay on the Rosetta Stone that Budge published in 1893 in his anthology The Mummy. Renouf’s polemic attacks, and even quotes from, Budge’s essay, without ever naming Budge. His long-standing personal contempt for Budge, arising from his dealings with him as a colleague at the British Museum (where Renouf was keeper of Oriental antiquities from 1886 until his forced retirement in 1891), and his ad hominem motive for writing ‘Young and Champollion’, are explicit in Renouf’s bitter last letter before his death in 1897, written to a fellow scholar Karl F. Piehl. Here Renouf calls Budge a ‘despicable scoundrel who has dared to repeat the ancient calumnies against Champollion’, and lists the reasons why Budge should be regarded as a charlatan and a plagiarist in his Egyptological work. (See The Letters of Peter le Page Renouf, vol. 4: 375–76.) Although Renouf scored a number of palpable hits against Young in his polemic, he was himself guilty of distorting the historical evidence in order to acquit Champollion of plagiarism, partly as a result of his animus against Budge and also because he apparently suffered from a specialist’s prejudice against a polymath. Nonetheless, anyone interested in the debate over Young versus Champollion should carefully read Renouf’s essay and make up his or her own mind on the basis of the evidence Renouf actually presents rather than his concealed personal motives.
131 ‘Two undeniable facts’ Ibid: 208.
131 ‘Even if one allows that Champollion’ Parkinson, Rosetta Stone: 44.
132 ‘M. le docteur Young has done in England’ Champollion, Lettre à M. Dacier: 16.
132 ‘I must say that in the same period’ Champollion, Précis (1824): 17.
132 ‘in 1821’ Ibid: 21.
132 ‘a little after my arrival in Paris’ Quoted by Sottas in his preface to Champollion, Lettre à M. Dacier: 47. Sottas’s 1922 preface is the most balanced appraisal of Young versus Champollion written by a Frenchman.
133 ‘I recognize that he was the first’ Champollion, Précis (1824): 7–8 (translated in Parkinson, Cracking Codes: 40).
133 ‘something like a hieroglyphic alphabet’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 182.
135 ‘as I had not leisure’ Ibid: 296. The brief publication of the Philae obelisk by Bankes is entitled Geometrical Elevation of an Obelisk … from the island of Philae, together with the pedestal … first discovered there by W. J. Bankes … in 1815: at whose suggestion & expense, both have been since removed … for the purpose of being erected at Kingston Hall in Dorsetshire (London: John Murray, 1821). There is a copy in the British Library.
139 ‘Le Zodiaque de Paris’ For a detailed discussion of the Dendera Zodiac, see Buchwald and Josefowicz.
142 ‘Je tiens mon affaire!’ Quoted in Aimé Champollion-Figeac: 57. Another version of the story has ‘Je tiens l’affaire!’.
142 ‘Fresnel, a young mathematician’ Quoted in Peacock: 321–22.
144 ‘I did certainly expect’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 292.
144 ‘The hieroglyphical text of the inscription of Rosetta’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 292–93.
146 ‘This course of investigation’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 293–94.
146 ‘I shall never consent to recognize’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 256.
146 ‘Nothing can exceed’ Footnote in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 255. Although Leitch excoriates Champollion in parts of his edition of Young’s papers, he also praises him highly for his later work and does not appear to have been motivated by anything other than his respect for Young’s work.
147 ‘[that] the further he advances’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 299.
147 ‘to nothing’ Champollion, Précis (1824): 38.
148 ‘I wish he would have the decency’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 462.
148 ‘the phonetic writing existed in Egypt’ Champollion, Lettre à M. Dacier: 41–42.
148 ‘tradition’ Hartleben (1906): 400. Among scholars of the hieroglyphic decipherment, Hartleben’s ‘tradition’ is followed by, for example, Solé and Valbelle in The Rosetta Stone and by Parkinson in Cracking Codes, but not by Sottas in his preface to the centenary edition of the Lettre à M. Dacier or by Pope in The Story of Decipherment. Indeed, Sottas specifically notes (page 48) that Hartleben’s date, 21 Dec. 1821, and her other dates from this crucial period of Champollion’s life, 1821–22, must be treated with caution in the absence of reliable documentary evidence. Champollion’s letter of 9 Jan. 1823 to Young about his latest discoveries of the names of pharaohs appears in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 249–51.
149 ‘The fourteen partially damaged lines’ Champollion, Précis (1824): 266–67.
149 ‘The publication of his letter to Dacier’ Hartleben: 241.
150 ‘King Louis XVIII to M. Champollion’ Quoted in Hartleben: 243.
XI AN EGYPTIAN RENAISSANCE
151 ‘On entering this room’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 1: 84–85.
151 ‘For me, the road to Memphis’ Quoted by Hartleben in her introduction to Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 1: vi.
152 ‘M. Champollion, who, in speaking to me’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 391.
153 ‘the daughter of her father’ Quoted in Hartleben: 270.
153 ‘marked out on the hillsides’ Quoted in Hartleben: 271.
154 ‘the struggle of a Pygmy’ Quoted by Hartleben in Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 1: 13.
155 ‘You are, without doubt’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 1: 20–21.
157 ‘In these remains, so fragile’ Ibid: 85–86.
158 ‘The most important papyrus’ Ibid: 87.
158 ‘I confess that’ Ibid: 90.
159 ‘beautiful yellow costume’ Ibid: 114–15.
160 ‘It is better to be the first’ Quoted in Lacouture: 346.
160 ‘we are wretches, in France’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 1: 184.
161 ‘He gave me news’ Ibid: 186.
161 ‘the first lively city’ Ibid: 194.
161 ‘From a certain distance’ Ibid: 198–99.
163 ‘a beautiful, great and good service’ Quoted in Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 1: 227.
163 ‘two ladies would not agree’ Quoted in Hartleben: 309.
163 ‘the only city in Italy’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 1: 235.
165 ‘I was no sooner taken into his friendship’ Quoted by Franco Serino in Rosellini: 9.
165 ‘excellent heart and well-furnished head’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 1: 308.
XII CURATOR AT THE LOUVRE
167 ‘Collections of Egyptian monuments’ Quoted in Lacouture: 387.
168 ‘It is the pomp, then, of the Egyptians’ Denon, vol. 2: 63.
170 ‘in spite of Paris and her pomp’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 1: 408–9.
170 ‘I have a magnificent’ Ibid: 411–12.
171 ‘the brother of your Stuffed King’ Ibid: 421.
171 ‘it includes Egyptian jewels’ Ibid: 421.
172 ‘Egyptian antiquities in Egyptian rooms’ Quoted in Hartleben: 353.
173 ‘Contrary to all the received wisdom’ Hartleben: 373.
173 ‘colonie Grenobloise’ Quoted in Hartleben: 351.
173 ‘like true sisters’ Hartleben: 351.
173 ‘as a beautiful gift’ Ibid: 351.
174 ‘You write that from time to time’ Quoted in Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 423–24.
174 ‘has shown me far more attention’ Quoted in Robinson, The Last Man Who Knew Everything: 230.
175 ‘kindness and liberality’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 469.
175 ‘30 years ago’ ‘Advertisement’ in Young, Rudiments of an Egyptian Dictionary: vii.
175 ‘Young was the first person’ Ray, ‘The name of the first’.
175 ‘I am leaving on a voyage’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 7.
XIII TO EGYPT, AT LAST
176 ‘The dog in Egypt’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 26–27.
177 ‘the new knowledge acquired’ Quoted in Lacouture: 396.
177 ‘Between 1810 and 1828’ Usick: 101.
180 ‘There reigns in Egypt’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 1–2.
181 ‘It is the hand of Amun’ Ibid: 41.
181 ‘types of odes or litanies’ Ibid: 11–12.
182 ‘The rediscovery of ancient Egyptian literature’ Parkinson, The Tale of Sinuhe: 2. ‘The Teaching of King Amenemhat’ is discussed and translated on pages 203–11 of Parkinson’s book.
183 ‘Preceded by two janissaries’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 21.
183 ‘There is enough of the old Egypt’ Ibid: 86. The complete text of Champollion’s Egyptian journal, annotated by the Egyptologist Diane Harlé, with historical illustrations by expedition artists and others, and contemporary photographs by Hervé Champollion, appears in the magnificent L’Égypte de Jean-François Champollion: Lettres & journaux de voyage (1828–29).
193 ‘Good day, Citizen’ Ibid: 27.
193 ‘A quick examination’ Ibid: 27–28.
195 ‘skills and generosity’ Ridley: 157.
195 ‘So we shall sail under the auspices’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 47.
198 ‘Thanks to the Thoulounid dynasty’ Ibid: 85.
198 ‘in the tone with which Blue-Beard’ Ibid: 78.
199 ‘Any impartial man’ Ibid: 103.
199 ‘We managed to climb the mountain’ Ibid: 107.
200 ‘The star is the determinative’ Ibid: 117.
200 ‘grand discovery’ Hincks, ‘An attempt to ascertain’: 134.
200 ‘probably his greatest single achievement’ Ray, Rosetta Stone: 90.
202 ‘Man proposes’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 130.
202 ‘The animals, quadrupeds, birds and fishes’ Ibid: 132.
202 ‘a walking mummy’ Ibid: 152.
203 ‘united grace and majesty’ Ibid: 153.
203 ‘Don’t laugh’ Ibid: 154.
XIV IN SEARCH OF RAMESSES
205 ‘The great temple of Ibsamboul’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 177.
205 ‘the situation of Thebes’ Denon, vol. 1: 215.
206 ‘marvel after marvel … the old Egyptians’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 158–61.
209 ‘As for me, at five in the afternoon’ Ibid: 171.
209 ‘I do not know whether there is some malicious genie’ Ibid: 140.
211 ‘After two and a half hours of admiration’ Ibid: 177–78.
213 ‘I am proud now’ Ibid: 181.
213 ‘The food was delicious’ Ibid: 188.
215 ‘This seems to me to demonstrate’ Ibid: 221.
215 ‘I could not help but feel’ Ibid: 201.
215 ‘I felt a keen pleasure’ Ibid: 188.
215 ‘Remember that I am a thousand leagues’ Ibid: 243.
216 ‘I bid them adieu’ Ibid: 208.
216 ‘It is King Ramesses’ Ibid: 246.
217 ‘the most celebrated and finest’ Ibid: 308.
217 ‘I felt a burning desire’ Ibid: 303.
217 ‘So the poor Dr Young’ Ibid: 249–50.
218 ‘no longer ran the risk’ Lacouture: 429.
219 ‘Absolute silence is necessary’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 398.
219 ‘The general sense of this composition’ Ibid: 285.
220 ‘This double series of tableaux’ Ibid: 291.
220 ‘drawn by love of science’ Ibid: 307. Champollion’s and Rosellini’s ‘vandalism’ of the tomb of Seti I is discussed in Thompson: 360.
222 ‘A single column’ Ibid: 387.
223 ‘almost like a monk’ Ibid: 403.
223 ‘In the midst of tamarinds’ Quoted in Lacouture: 442.
223 ‘The inundation this year’ Champollions, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 403–4.
224 ‘about 6000 years’ Ibid: 429.
224 ‘So was Ramesses really the greatest’ Ibid: 422. For a discussion of Muhammad Ali, see Mansel, ‘The man who remade Alexandria’.
225 ‘I have amassed’ Ibid: 456.
XV FIRST PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY
226 ‘If I knew there were still some years’ Quoted in Hartleben: 573.
226 ‘that it was a work which if he should live’ Quoted in Robinson, The Last Man Who Knew Everything: 235.
227 ‘par-dessous M. Pardessus’ Champollion, Lettres de Champollion le Jeune, vol. 2: 406.
229 ‘His goal was a monument’ Curran et al: 251. For a thorough discussion of Champollion’s publicly unacknowledged role in the transfer of the Luxor obelisk to Paris, see the Epilogue, ‘L’absent de l’obélisque’, by Jean Vidal, in Lacouture: 473–92.
230 ‘I owe everything to Blacas’ Quoted in Hartleben: 553.
231 ‘was now too tormented’ Quoted in Hartleben: 522. My account of French political developments in 1830 is based on Price, and also Mansel.
231 ‘to explain Egypt by the Bible’ Quoted in Hartleben: 537.
232 ‘This scholar brought to the comparative examination’ Quoted in Faure: 786.
233 ‘something like a hieroglyphic alphabet’ Young, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3: 182.
233 ‘supposed enchorial alphabet’ Ibid: 183–84.
233 ‘defective in principle’ Quoted in Solé and Valbelle: 153. A translated extract from Champollion’s inaugural lecture appears as Appendix 4 in Solé and Valbelle: 147–55.
234 ‘Only one month more’ Quoted in Hartleben: 577.
235 ‘Death lies in wait for me’ Quoted in Lacouture: 464.
235 ‘It is there that my science was born’ Quoted in Hartleben: 583.
235 ‘Look after it carefully’ Quoted in preface to Champollion, Grammaire égyptienne: iv.
235 ‘So soon – there are still’ Quoted in Hartleben: 585.
235 ‘And now for the afterlife’ Quoted in Lacouture: 468.
236 ‘The admirable works of your brother’ Quoted in Aimé Champollion-Figeac, Les Deux Champollion: 106.
XVI THE HIEROGLYPHS AFTER CHAMPOLLION
237 ‘A man has departed’ An alternative recent translation of this well-known hieratic papyrus (Chester Beatty IV, verso 3.7–11, in the British Museum) appears in Parkinson, Voices from Ancient Egypt: 150.
238 ‘We do not wish to say’ Quoted in Dewachter: 131.
238 ‘The debate continues’ Quoted in Lacouture: 470.
240 ‘In the month of March 1832’ Preface to Champollion, Dictionnaire égyptien: iii.
240 ‘But though complete in design’ Griffith: 65.
241 ‘In the general order of the divisions’ Quoted in introduction to Budge: xxxi. A well-known current dictionary is Raymond O. Faulkner’s A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1976), which uses an arrangement based on the hieroglyphic ‘alphabet’. But this dictionary is useful only to already-trained Egyptologists. It has therefore been supplemented by David Shennum’s English–Egyptian Index of Faulkner’s Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1977), which permits the user to find all the hieroglyphic equivalents of an English word, listed by their page number in Faulkner’s dictionary.
242 ‘In reality Coptic is a’ Griffith: 65.
242 ‘In addition to the defects’ Hincks, ‘An attempt to ascertain’: 135–36.
243 ‘I was, for a certain period’ Quoted in Renouf, Letters, vol. 4: 117.
244 ‘only now did Champollion’s decipherment’ Parkinson, Cracking Codes: 42.
244 ‘One of the greatest embarrassments’ Lepsius: 21–22.
245 ‘phonetic hieroglyphs’ This table appears in Champollion, Grammaire égyptienne: 35–46.
245 ‘general phonetic alphabet’ Lepsius: 42.
245 ‘hieroglyphic signs for the vulture’ Ray, ‘Edward Hincks and the progress of Egyptology’, in Cathcart (ed.), Edward Hincks Bicentenary Lectures: 60.
246 ‘Hieroglyphic writing is a complex system’ Champollion, Précis (1824): 327.
POSTSCRIPT: POLYMATHS AND GENIUSES
253 ‘Two undeniable facts remain’ Renouf, ‘Young and Champollion’: 208.
253 ‘one thing is sure’ Hartleben: 604.