A life given to hieroglyphs: what came before Champollion
The hieroglyphic part of the Rosetta Stone inscription. Cartouches with royal names are clearly visible. British museum
“And the lilacs were given, - there, in the south,
In the Nubian wild south - muddy, sultry
And still the world is alien, reserved,
As under Khufu, under Kambiz ... I brought
A bow from there and a green-copper quiver,
Hippopotamus skin shield, slender dart,
Panther fur, rusty chain mail,
But what do I need them - a question. "
(Ivan Bunin "In the hot gold of the pyramid's sunset ...")
In the Nubian wild south - muddy, sultry
And still the world is alien, reserved,
As under Khufu, under Kambiz ... I brought
A bow from there and a green-copper quiver,
Hippopotamus skin shield, slender dart,
Panther fur, rusty chain mail,
But what do I need them - a question. "
(Ivan Bunin "In the hot gold of the pyramid's sunset ...")
History great civilizations. In our past materials, it was told about Russian travelers who visited Egypt. But, it is clear that there were also travelers from other countries. There were, described his curiosities, but ... could not read a word from the inscriptions that they met there.
Therefore, today we will continue our story about the culture of Ancient Egypt, supplementing it with the story of how scientists learned to read Egyptian hieroglyphs, thanks to which Egyptology was on a solid foundation of written knowledge. Indeed, already in antiquity, everyone understood that if it was possible to read the numerous inscriptions found in Egypt, then, undoubtedly, knowledge about its history would increase enormously. The mysterious sphinxes would find their voice, the mysterious papyri would cease to be such, the image and sculptures of the pharaohs could be associated with specific historical characters.
There were many attempts to read the hieroglyphs. Moreover, the paths followed by scientists from different countries, who tried to unravel them, are so confusing and whimsical that it would be possible to write a kind of ... historical detective story about them. And since people like this genre, we will try in this vein and tell about how the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were read, which are as accessible to everyone today as, say, the hieroglyphic writing of modern Chinese or Japanese.
Drawing of the hieroglyphic part of the Rosetta stone inscription
To begin with, we note that the need to read Egyptian writing was already understood by ancient historians, who were not satisfied with the knowledge of contemporary Egypt.
But what did they already know about hieroglyphs?
"Father of history" Herodotus in the middle of the XNUMXth century. BC e. reported that the Egyptians use two types of writing - sacred and folk. Historian Plutarch at the turn of the XNUMXst-XNUMXnd centuries AD e. wrote that each hieroglyph means a whole word or even a phrase. But Clement of Alexandria in the II century indicated that there were three writing systems: the first was hieroglyphics, the second was hieratic (writing of priestly books) and the third was epistolography, everyday writing.
But how do you read them?
The Egyptian Gorapollo, who lived in the IV century and, of course, knew the Coptic language, the spoken language of the Egyptians of that time, was engaged in this. He wrote two thick volumes of discourse on hieroglyphs - "Hieroglyphics", then almost forgotten. Explained the meaning of some of them, and correctly. But ... in an absolutely fantastic way. For example, the hieroglyph "goose". He translated it as "son," and rightly so. But here is his explanation: "Because the goose is a child-loving bird!" The hieroglyph "hare" is the verb "to open". Do you know why? Because "the hare always keeps his eyes open." It is clear that this "decryption" did more harm than good.
The Renaissance began, and new scholars appeared interested in hieroglyphs. For example, John Boltsami. In his 454-page tome, he did not cite a single Egyptian hieroglyph (“this is how science should be dealt with!”), But he explained to everyone how they should be read. It turned out that everything is simple: seeing a baboon means the beginning of a new month. Why? Because "baboons always scream at the dawn of a new month." Well, an elephant (the Egyptians did not have such a hieroglyph at all!) Means a king. There is even nothing to argue about!
And in 1583, the doctor Pierre Langlois was found, who published a "study" with 54 tables in which he proved the connection between hieroglyphs and ... the coats of arms of the French nobility. By the way, he appropriated the image of an elephant to the Duke of Richelieu. And the popularity of this work was so great that it was even republished!
His business was taken up by Athanasius Kircher, who lived in the XNUMXth century and was a very erudite person for that time. To begin with, he copied the hieroglyphic inscriptions from the obelisks brought to Rome and then ... deciphered them. How is it? And this is how it is: a triangle and next to a man with his arms raised up - “the priest prays in the temple”, because the triangle is the “roof”, and the man is, of course, the priest. In fact, these two hieroglyphs are translated like this: "I give."
Well, the Frenchman Joseph de Guigne (this one already lived in the XNUMXth century), drawing attention to the similarity of some Chinese and Egyptian hieroglyphs, said at all that the Chinese in ancient times lived in Egypt and then left there to their own China. True, knowledge of a number of ancient languages helped him make a very important guess that the Egyptians could omit vowel sounds when writing.
Here our Russian scientists have already noted. In particular, Ivan Kokh, the director of the St. Petersburg Teachers' Seminary, in 1788 expressed the idea that Egyptian writing should have a sound character.
Moreover, the most amazing thing is that even then the bilingual text of the Greek writer Hermapion was known - a translation of an inscription on one of the Roman obelisks, although it was not preserved in the original, but was cited in one of the works of Ammianus Marcellinus. And that was the key to reading the hieroglyphs, but ... Kircher announced that “they don't read like that,” and his authority was so high that no one paid attention to this translation. Rather, they did it, but after the discovery of François Champollion ...
And then fate itself came to the aid of the daring, as is very often the case: in 1799, French soldiers in Egypt found the famous Rosetta Stone, in which the same dedicatory inscription was made in three different letters - hieroglyphs, strange squiggles and good for everyone famous Greek letters. The Greek part of the text was immediately translated and it became clear from it that this inscription was triple, that is, it was written in sacred, native and Greek letters. True, the upper part of the slab was badly damaged, and part of the text was lost. But one could hope that the surviving parts would become the key to the ancient hieroglyphic writing.
Whole Rosetta Stone. British museum
The historian Karamzin so directly from this in the journal "Vestnik Evropy" and wrote: "... French scientists found in Egypt a stone with an inscription of Egyptian priests in honor of Ptolemy-Epiphanes, in Greek, Coptic and hieroglyphic languages, whose key is lost. This discovery gave hope to find out the meaning of the hieroglyphic images through the Greek inscription. "
Tetradrachm issued by Ptolemy V Epiphanes, British Museum
By the way, even before the discovery of the Rosetta stone, at the end of the XNUMXth century, the Danish archaeologist Jörgen Soega found out that in hieroglyphic inscriptions, the names of the pharaohs are enclosed in a special frame in the form of an oval - a cartouche. There were six such cartouches on the Rosetta stone, and they are all alike. Therefore, it was easy to assume that all of them in different versions denote the name of the king Ptolemy Epiphanes.
So, having such "reinforcement", the famous French orientalist Sylvester de Sacy undertook to decipher the inscription on the plate. And he decided to start not with complex hieroglyphs, but with the "native text", since it is well preserved. I thought and decided to use proper names for decryption, hoping in this way to recognize the letters of the Egyptian alphabet. But how to find them, because the text is solid, separate words are not highlighted ?!
Cartouche of Cleopatra II from the Philae Obelisk
And he thought (you always have to think before doing something and especially writing!) And ... found a way out. He counted the number of lines of the Greek inscription and the Egyptian inscription and, knowing the place of the proper names of the Greek text, compared them with the "native" text. The two words "Alexander" and "Alexandria" were especially important, because they are very similar, and (oh, joy) they were found where they should have been! Moreover, he found these names with the help of an ordinary compass. Here are some strange "devices" sometimes have to resort to linguists and ... with success.
But with the names "Ptolemy" and "Alexander" de Sacy was not lucky. That is, he found their place in the text with the help of a compass, but for some reason they only began with the same letter or symbol, but this contradicts all common sense. And de Sacy realized that he had failed and ... gave a copy of the slab to the Swede Åkerblad.
Cartouche with the name of Cleopatra. The inscription is turned in the other direction. The fact is that the Egyptians wrote both from left to right and from right to left.
And he was more fortunate than the Frenchman. He found in the text much more names and, accordingly, icons that denote the sounds that make up them. In addition, he used his knowledge of the Coptic language and proved that many sounds of the Egyptian language have a Coptic sound, or rather, on the contrary - the Egyptian language was the first, and Coptic followed it.
So he learned to read foreign names in the Egyptian text. But as soon as he tried to read the text itself, he failed. And Okerblad gave up on this task.
Drawings of the names of Ptolemy (above) and Cleopatra (below)
Then the Englishman Thomas Jung got down to business. At fifteen, he already knew French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. Became a doctor. He was engaged in natural sciences and physics. And since the riddle of hieroglyphs at that time worried the entire scientific community of Europe, he also drew attention to it.
And here the inscription is destroyed. And all because it is depicted here, most likely, the apostate Pharaoh Akhenaten
Studying the inscriptions on the Rosetta stone and copying them, he made an outstanding discovery: he proved that the native writing is ... cursive hieroglyphic writing, saw modified and simplified hieroglyphs in its squiggles.
Then he counted the signs found in the text and saw that there were more than 100 of them, and no language in the world had more than 30–40 sounds. So, he decided, some signs convey sounds, and some - concepts, and maybe words. That is why both de Sacy and Oakerblad could not read Egyptian texts: in addition to letters that convey sounds, there were also icons that conveyed concepts!
Hieroglyphic alphabetic characters
Then Jung understood why de Sacy's names "Ptolemy" and "Alexander" began and ended with the same sign - it was a simplified image of a cartouche. And then, analyzing the hieroglyphic text, he was able to completely correctly determine the meaning of the five hieroglyphs. "Square" meant the letter P, "horned crawling snake" - F, "semicircle" - T, "zigzag straight line" - H, and "upright feather" - aЙ.
And yet he did not advance further and was never able to read the hieroglyphic inscriptions. He had just begun to penetrate into the mystery of hieroglyphs, but ... more than five signs of his strength and intelligence were not enough.
Only François Champollion was able to solve this problem. But we will tell you about his scientific feat next time.
To be continued ...
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