bile to the credit of being the first to assign correct phonetic values to a few hieroglyphic signs, the true credit for the de cipherment of the Egyptian hicroglyiphies and for the foundation of modern Egyptology belongs to Jean Francois Champollion (q.v.). horn at trenoble in 1790. lie early applied himself to the study of Egyptian antiquities. was a master of Coptic, and at the age of twenty-four was known as the author of an important work on the history and civilization of ancient Egypt L'L'qypte sous les Pharaons (2 vols., Paris. IS] I t). In his investigations of the hieroglyphics Champollion. unlike Young. worked upon the theory that the diameters used for writing royal limper names were purely alphabetic. tin a small obelisk from Phil:1, containing parallel hieroglyphic and Greek inscriptions. he read and correctly analywd the names of Ptolemy and ('leopatra. and by subst it ut ing the phonetic values thus obtained in a large number of other hieroglyphically written names, he was able at mice to control his and to extend his sys tem. In this way he was soon able to make out all the alphabetic characters, and to read the names. not only of Ptolemaic kings and of Rmn an emperors, but also of the Phara )1IS Of the Old Empire. In the coarse of subsequent inyestiga tiems he discovered the nse of the ideograms and determinative:. and surmised at least the pho netic employment of the syllabic signs. -Ile pub lished an outline of his system in his celebrated 1,0ft-es ei 11. Dewier rela tires it !'alphabet des hi(roglypties phond'tiques employe' par les Egyp tirns 1S22), and developed it more fully in his Pre( is du .d+t.stit+e hie'roglyphique des aneictis Eyypliens (Paris, IS24: 2d ed. IS'27-2R). Until his death Champollion devoted himself with wonderful energy and success to the elucidation of the language, history. religion, and antiquities of ancient Egypt. and left, in addition to his published works, a large mass of manuscript. Ills (It'll/unit/ire e'yyplien Ile i P ark IStrIft-41) and his Dietionnaire e'gyptien (Paris. 1941-4(3) were not published until after his death.
ChampoIlion's results were not received without reserve. Amon.• the chief of his system were spohn and Seyffa•th, both pro fessors at Leipzig. Seyffarth. developed the system of ;_.;pohn, held the erroneous theory that the hieroglyphic character: were, with scarcely any exception, purely phonetic, and he even read the deterutinatives (see Ilmnota.vrutcs) as sepa rate His system thus formed the op posite extreme to that of Kircher, and his trans lations are almost as fantastic as those of Ins seventeenth-century predecessor. Sey•a•th did much to retard the progress of Egyptology, but his system was finally discredited.
Of a very different character was the work of the distinguished German scholar. Karl Richard Lepsius (q.v.). In his Lt tire a m. lioscilini sur l'alphabet Itil:roglyphique (Rome, 13:IT ), Lepsius submitted Champollion's system to a searching criticism, and while clearly proving its general correctness. he indicated a number of points in which revision vvas necessary. From Is-12 to 1S-15 he headed the archaeological expedition sent out by King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia to explore Egypt and Nubia. The results of the expedition were published under Lepsius's edi torial supervision in the magnilieent Denkmiiler nose .leoypten and .t(thlopie» 1 ter] in. IS-19-5s), which contains careful drawings and architectural plans of all the principal 1110111I of Egypt accessible at that time, as well as a remarkably extensive collection of inscrip tions dating from all periods of Egyptian his tory. This great work is one of the chief monu
ments of modern Egyptology. In 1,86(i Lepsius had the good fortune to find at Tanis the cele b•ated Decree of Canopus, issued by the Egyp tian priests in favor of Ptolemy 111., Euergetes, dating from the year n.e. 233. The inserip thm is trilincrual, and the Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphic portions arc all in an excellent state of preservation. A duplicate of it. found at Dainanhur in 1381, was published by Pierret un der the title Le decret trilingue do Conopc (Paris. 1SS1).
The first Egyptologist vvho really translated complete texts was the French academician. Vi comte Emmanuel de Itoug6 (died IS7•). Ap plying, strict philological methods, he pointed out in his llr'moire sur /*inscription (P.Ihmes (Paris. IS:A ). in his Etude sue line stele e'gyp ticnne de la bibliothivie intp(rialc (Paris. 1856 59). and in other works the manner in which Egyptian texts should be interpreted and ex ined. and tie (Paris, completely revolutionized the treatment of Egyptian grammar. In the explanation of hier atic texts, hitherto much neglected. he was also suecessful, and in 1856 he read before the Insti tute of France a translation of nearly the whole of the poem celehrating the exploits of Bameses II. in his war with the Hittites. In this special department of Egyptology he was, however, sur passed by his compatriot, Francois .Toseph Cha vas. whose Le papyrus magique Harris (Chalon 1S110) and Voyaoc d'un (it ,'Ofrie, en PhrMice. en Palestine, etc. ( Pa ris, I,M;)—the latter published in eollaboration with the English Egyptologist, Goodwin—may be said to have placed the study of hieratic texts upon solid grounds.
The study of Demotic texts, neglected after the death of Champollion. was revived by Hein rich Itrugsch (q.v.), whose Grummuire ( Paris, 1,55) formed the basis of subse quent work in this field. In more recent years, Eugene Bevillout (Chrestomathie th:motique, Paris, IS70,80; Nouvelle Chrestomathic drtno Paris, 1s7s) and J. J. Hess (Dtr demo tis•ht ii0»1 (I PI rwu mine Ila-m-us, Leipzig. 1353; Der ynostische Papyrus eon London, Freiburg„ 1892) deserve mention as specialists in Demotic. Among the many important works of B•ugsch, however, the chief place must be assigned to his Ilicroylyphisch-demotisches It ijet, rbuell (7 vols., Leipzig, IS(17-82). The influence of this great thesaurus of the language upon the development of Egyptological knowledge has been important in the highest degree. Pierret's i ocabullirc 7/ 'h'roo/yphique (Paris. 1875) is merely an abridgment of B•ugsch's great work. Levi's Vocabo/ario geroglifico- cop to - el»mica (Turin, IS37-89) has contributed little to the advance ment of Egyptian lexicography. A new and com prehensive Egyptian dictionary was in 1902 in course of preparation in Germany, under the di reeticu of Prof. Adolf Erman, of Berlin, but he did not expect that it would he ready for the press for several years. Professor Erman has the distinction of having inaugurated the historical method in the study of Egyptian grammar. It was he who first aceurately defined the characteristic features of the several periods of the language. and treated the three earliest stages in his works: elogyptische Gronmatik (Leipzig, I33O) : Die Sprach«les Pgpyrusliestrar 18891 : and degyptische Grammatik (Berlin, 1894). See EGYPT, section Language.
That Coptic studies have kept pace with other branches of Egyptology is due to the labors of scholars like Peyron. Sehwartze, Tattam, Stern, de Lagarde, Am•ineau, Hyvernat. and Steindort• .