BIBLIOGRAPHY

Very little of Champollion’s writings has been translated into English – not even the Lettre à M. Dacier. This is not surprising, since the original papers and books are of interest primarily to professional Egyptologists and historians of Egyptology. The obvious exceptions are the letters and journal relating to his Egyptian expedition of 1828–29, which were published in 1833. Extracts from these appear in Egyptian Diaries (2001) and give a vivid picture of Champollion’s personality, although the translation is not entirely accurate.

As for memoirs and biographies of Champollion, none has been published in English. The closest to a biography is The Keys of Egypt: The Race to Read the Hieroglyphs by Lesley and Roy Adkins, published in 2000. As its title implies, this book concentrates on Champollion’s decipherment, the meaning of the hieroglyphs and the development of Egyptology; however, the authors display limited understanding of writing systems and provide no references for their many quotations from French sources. Even in French, no biography of Champollion appeared until the 20th century. The first ever biography was published in German in 1906 by Hermine Hartleben, a schoolteacher who worked in Egypt; it was not translated into French until as late as 1984, in an abridged version. Hartleben’s work is inevitably out of date, but as a labour of love it remains a valuable historical source if read with scepticism. The biography by the political journalist and biographer Jean Lacouture, published in 1988, is much better written than Hartleben’s book; it is excellent on Champollion’s life and personality, but weak on the details of the decipherment and the development of Egyptology. A biography by Alain Faure, a historian of Dauphiné who was born in the region, was published in 2004 and is strongest on Champollion’s life in Grenoble. Strangely, these three works contain hardly a hieroglyph in the text (not a single one in the cases of Hartleben and Lacouture). For an account of Champollion in French by an Egyptologist, which also includes some hieroglyphs, one may turn to Michel Dewachter’s very brief but attractively illustrated book published in 1990, which features a useful section of original documents.

Books for the non-specialist on ancient Egypt as a whole, including the hieroglyphs, are too numerous to comment on individually. Some of the best appear in the bibliography below. It is, however, worth singling out a well-researched and well-cast six-part television series produced by the BBC in 2005: entitled Egypt: Rediscovering a Lost World, it is currently available on DVD. Two of its episodes, ‘The Mystery of the Rosetta Stone’ and ‘The Secrets of the Hieroglyphs’, dramatize Champollion’s life and work.

SELECTED BOOKS BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS CHAMPOLLION:

Panthéon égyptien: Collection des personnages mythologiques de l’ancienne Égypte, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1823–25

Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens, Paris: Treuttel & Würtz, 1824; 2nd edn Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1828

Monuments de l’Égypte et de la Nubie d’après les dessins exécutés sur les lieux sous la direction de Champollion le jeune et les descriptions autographes qu’il a laissées (ed. J.-J. Champollion-Figeac), 4 vols, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1835–45

Grammaire égyptienne, ou Principes généraux de la langue sacrée égyptienne appliquée à la représentation de la langue parlée (ed. J.-J. Champollion-Figeac), Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1836

Dictionnaire égyptien en écriture hiéroglyphique (ed. J.-J. Champollion-Figeac), Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1841–43

Champollion inconnu: Lettres inédites (ed. L. de la Brière), Paris: Plon, 1897

Lettres de Champollion le Jeune (ed. H. Hartleben): vol. 1: Lettres écrites d’Italie; vol. 2: Lettres et journaux écrits pendant le voyage d’Égypte, Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1909

Lettre à M. Dacier, relative à l’alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques, centenary edn, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1922 (preface by Henri Sottas)

Lettres à Zelmire (ed. Edda Bresciani), Paris: Éditions l’Asiathèque, 1978 (preface by Jean Leclant)

Lettres à son frère 1804–1818 (ed. Pierre Vaillant), Paris: Éditions l’Asiathèque, 1984

L’Égypte de Jean-François Champollion: Lettres & journaux de voyage (1828–1829), Suresnes: Image/Magie, 1989 (preface by Christiane Ziegler, photographs by Hervé Champollion)

Egyptian Diaries: How One Man Solved the Mysteries of the Nile, London: Gibson Square Books, 2001 (reissued as The Code-Breaker’s Secret Diaries, London: Gibson Square Books, 2009, with a preface by Joyce Tyldesley)

BOOKS AND ARTICLES BY OTHERS

Adkins, Lesley, and Adkins, Roy, The Keys of Egypt: The Race to Read the Hieroglyphs, London: HarperCollins, 2000

Andrews, Carol, The Rosetta Stone, London: British Museum Publications, 1981

Baines, John, Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007

Ballard, Richard, The Unseen Terror: The French Revolution in the Provinces, London: I.B.Tauris, 2010

Bednarski, Andrew, Holding Egypt: Tracing the Reception of the ‘Description de l’Égypte’ in Nineteenth-Century Great Britain, London: Golden House, 2005

Belzoni, Giovanni, Belzoni’s Travels: Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries in Egypt and Nubia (ed. Alberto Siliotti), London: British Museum Press, 2001

Buchwald, Jed Z., and Josefowicz, Diane Greco, The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate between Religion and Science, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010

Budge, E. A. Wallis, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, 2 vols, London: John Murray, 1920

Burleigh, Nina, Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt, New York: HarperCollins, 2007

Carter, Howard, and Mace, A. C., The Tomb of Tut.Ankh.Amen, London: Cassell, 1923

Cathcart, Kevin J. (ed.), The Edward Hincks Bicentenary Lectures, Dublin: University College Dublin, Department of Near Eastern Languages, 1994

Champollion-Figeac, Aimé, Les Deux Champollion: leur vie et leurs oeuvres, leur correspondance archéologique relative au Dauphiné et à l’Égypte, Grenoble: Xavier Drevet, 1887

Champollion-Figeac, Jacques-Joseph, Fourier et Napoléon: L’Égypte et les cent jours, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1844

Clayton, Peter A., The Rediscovery of Ancient Egypt: Artists and Travellers in the 19th Century, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1982

Collier, Mark, and Manley, Bill, How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach Yourself, London: British Museum Press, 1998

Curl, James Stevens, The Egyptian Revival: Ancient Egypt as the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West, London: Routledge, 2005

Curran, Brian A., et al., Obelisk: A History, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009

Davies, W. V., Egyptian Hieroglyphs, London: British Museum Publications, 1987

Denon, Dominique Vivant, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, during the Campaigns of General Bonaparte, 2 vols, 2nd edn, London: J. Cundee, 1803

Description de l’Égypte, Cologne: Taschen, 2007

Dewachter, Michel, Champollion: Un scribe pour l’Égypte, Paris: Gallimard, 1990

Downs, Jonathan, Discovery at Rosetta: The Stone that Unlocked the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt, London: Constable & Robinson, 2008

El-Daly, Okasha, Egyptology: The Missing Millennium: Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings, London: UCL Press, 2005

Faure, Alain, Champollion: Le savant dechiffré, Paris: Fayard, 2004

Findlen, Paula (ed.), Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything, London: Routledge, 2004

Griffith, Francis Llewellyn, ‘The centenary of Egyptology’, Times Literary Supplement, 2 Feb. 1922, 65–66 (republished as ‘The decipherment of the hieroglyphs’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 37 (1951), 38–46)

[Gurney, Hudson], ‘Memoir [of Young]’, in Young, Rudiments of an Egyptian Dictionary, 5–47

Hamilton, Alastair, The Copts and the West 1439–1822: The European Discovery of the Egyptian Church, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006

Hartleben, Hermine, Champollion: Sa vie et son oeuvre 1790–1832, Paris: Pygmalion/Gérard Watelet, 1984 (abridged translation of Hartleben’s two-volume biography Champollion: Sein Leben und Sein Werk, Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1906)

Herivel, John, Joseph Fourier: The Man and the Physicist, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975

Hincks, Edward, ‘An attempt to ascertain the number, names, and powers, of the letters of the hieroglyphic, or ancient Egyptian alphabet; grounded on the establishment of a new principle in the use of phonetic characters’, Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 21 (1847), 132–232

——, The Correspondence of Edward Hincks (ed. Kevin J. Cathcart), 3 vols, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2007–9

[Horapollo], The Hieroglyphs of Horapollo (trans. George Boas), Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993

Iversen, Erik, The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993

Jacq, Christian, Champollion the Egyptian (trans. Geraldine le Roy), London: Pocket Books, 2003

Lacouture, Jean, Champollion: Une vie de lumières, Paris: Grasset, 1988

Leclant, Jean, ‘Aux sources de l’Égyptologie Européenne: Champollion, Young, Rosellini, Lepsius’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 135 (1991), 743–62

Lepsius, Karl Richard, Lettre à M. le Professeur H. Rosellini sur l’alphabet hiéroglyphique, Rome, 1837

Mansel, Philip, Paris between Empires, 1814–1852, London: John Murray, 2001

——, ‘The man who remade Alexandria’, History Today, Dec. 2010, 26–32

Memoires d’Egypte: Hommage de l’Europe à Champollion, Strasbourg: La Nuée Bleue, 1990

A New Description of Sir John Soane’s Museum, 11th rev. edn, London: Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2007

Parkinson, Richard B., Voices from Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Middle Kingdom Writings, London: British Museum

Press, 1991

——, The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940–1640 BC, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998

——, Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment, London: British Museum Press, 1999

——, The Rosetta Stone, London: British Museum Press, 2005

Peacock, George, Life of Thomas Young, M.D., F.R.S., London: John Murray, 1855

Pope, Maurice, The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script, rev. edn, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1999

Price, Munro, The Perilous Crown: France between Revolutions, London: Pan, 2008

Ray, John, ‘The name of the first: Thomas Young and the decipherment of Egyptian writing’ (unpublished lecture)

——, Reflections of Osiris: Lives from Ancient Egypt, London: Profile, 2001

——, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt, London: Profile, 2007

Reeves, Nicholas, and Wilkinson, Richard H., The Complete Valley of the Kings: Tombs and Treasures of Egypt’s Greatest Pharaohs, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1996

Renouf, Peter le Page, ‘Young and Champollion’, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 19 (1897), 188–209

——, The Letters of Peter le Page Renouf (ed. Kevin J. Cathcart), 4 vols, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2002–4

Ridley, Ronald T., Napoleon’s Proconsul in Egypt: The Life and Times of Bernardino Drovetti, London: Rubicon Press, 1998

Robinson, Andrew, The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002

——, The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, The Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, among Other Feats of Genius, Oxford: Oneworld, 2007

——, Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World’s Undeciphered Scripts, rev. edn, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2009

——, Sudden Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010

Rosellini, Ippolito, The Monuments of Egypt and Nubia, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2003

Shaw, Ian, and Nicholson, Paul, The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, 2nd edn, London: British Museum Press, 2008

Solé, Robert, and Valbelle, Dominique, The Rosetta Stone: The Story of the Decoding of Hieroglyphics (trans. Steven Rendall), London: Profile, 2001

Taylor, John H. (ed.), Journey Through the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, London: British Museum Press, 2010

Thompson, Jason, Edward William Lane 1801–1876: The Life of the Pioneering Egyptologist and Orientalist, London: Haus, 2010

Usick, Patricia, Adventures in Egypt and Nubia: The Travels of William John Bankes (1786–1855), London: British Museum Press, 2002

Wilkinson, Richard H., Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1992

Young, Thomas, Rudiments of an Egyptian Dictionary in the Ancient Enchorial Character, London: J. and A. Arch, 1831

——, Miscellaneous Works of the Late Thomas Young, M.D., F.R.S., vol. 3 (ed. John Leitch), Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2003 (reprinted from the 1855 edn)