Cracking the Egyptian Code by Andrew Robinson

The Rosetta Stone, exposed in 1799 by way of Napoleon's military, recorded its inscription in 3 scripts - historical Greek, Coptic, and hieroglyphic. it'll supply students with the 1st clues to unlocking the secrets and techniques of Egyptian hieroglyphs, a language misplaced for almost millennia. greater than 20 years later a remarkably talented Frenchman, Jean-Francois Champollion effectively deciphered the hieroglyphs sparking a revolution in our wisdom of historic Egypt. 'Cracking the Egyptian Code' is the 1st biography in English of Champollion, broadly considered as the founding father of Egyptology. Andrew Robinson meticulously reconstructs how Champollion cracked the code of the hieroglyphic script, describing how Champollion began with Egyptian obelisks in Rome and papyri in eu collections, sailed the Nile for a yr, studied the tombs within the Valley of the Kings (a identify he first coined), and thoroughly in comparison the 3 scripts at the Rosetta Stone to penetrate the secret of the hieroglyphic textual content. Robinson additionally brings to lifestyles the competition among Champollion and the English scientist Thomas younger, who claimed credits for launching the decipherment, which Champollion hotly denied. there's even more to Champollion's existence than the Rosetta Stone and Robinson supplies equivalent weight to the numerous roles he performed in his tragically short existence, from a teenage professor in innovative France to a supporter of Napoleon (whom he met), an exile, and a curator on the Louvre. greatly illustrated, 'Cracking the Egyptian Code' will entice someone drawn to Egypt, decipherment and code-breaking, and Napoleon and the French Revolution.