The French Egyptologist Jean François Champollion (1790-1832) was the father of Egyptology and the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Born on Dec. 23, 1790, in Figeac, Lot Department, Jean François Champollion was educated at the lyceum in Grenoble (1801-1807). His interest in the civilization of ancient Egypt, and especially in the then-undeciphered hieroglyphic script of that land, was first aroused when as a boy he learned about the Rosetta Stone, a key monument having Greek and Egyptian versions of the same text. At the age of 16 he read a paper before the Grenoble Academy maintaining that Coptic was the ancient language of Egypt.

Champollion studied Oriental languages in Paris under the famous Orientalist Sylvestre de Sacy and during this period (1807-1809) produced the first parts of his Egypt under the Pharaohs: the Religion and History of Egypt and the Geography of Egypt. In 1809 he was appointed to...