1809年，商博良19歲就已經成為格勒諾布爾學院的歷史學教授。同年，他把焦點轉向了古埃及，心力全部放在學習科普特語上，以期終能找回法老王子民所說的語言。他甚至把掠過腦海的一切都翻譯成科普特語，認為這是學習純正埃及語真正有效的方法。他在給哥哥的信中說：「我要懂埃及文如法文，因為未來我在埃及莎草紙文獻上的重大研究，就要以這個語言為基礎。」這項明白表示要由科普特語通向古埃及文，且由此時起宣佈了他要進行的「重大研究」的雙重說明值得人們注意，因為埃及學的開端應該定在這個時期，即1809年3月，而非1822年9月。[1]
商博良於1832年3月4日於巴黎因內出血死去，享年41歲。
羅塞塔石碑研究
商博良對東方語言，尤其是古代埃及的科普特語深感興趣，因此開始系統地研究羅塞塔石碑。早在1799年7月15日，拿破崙侵略埃及的軍隊一名上尉皮耶·法蘭索瓦·札維耶·布夏賀在埃及港口城市羅塞塔附近發現該石碑。石碑是公元前196年托勒密王朝時代刻製的，上面有希臘字母、古埃及象形文字和古埃及通俗文字三種對照雕成的。石碑運到埃及的亞歷山大，法國科學家開始研究。1801年，法國戰敗投降，英國軍隊要將全部研究成果沒收，法國科學家威脅要全部燒掉，最後達成妥協，允許法國科學家保留研究成果和石碑拓片，但石碑被英國軍隊運往大英博物館保藏。
根據法國保存的資料，商博良從1822年到1824年得以完全投入到對羅塞塔石碑的研究，發表多篇研究論文，成功地破譯出古埃及象形文字的結構，這些符號有些是字母，有些是音節文字，有些則是義符，一個符號代表一整個事物，終於在1822年完成羅塞特碑碑文的全文翻譯。他編制出完整的埃及文字符號和希臘字母的對照表，為後來解讀大量的古埃及遺留下的紙草文書提供了非常有用的工具。他還發現了一份記載著從拉美西斯二世以來所有埃及法老名錄的紙草書的重要性。
埃及學開創
商博良於1826年擔任羅浮宮埃及文物館館長，1828年率領考古工作隊去埃及考察，1831年擔任法蘭西學院專為他開設的埃及學講座教授。
主要著作《古埃及象形文字體系概論》（Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens）於1824年出版，另外兩本鉅著《古埃及文法》（Grammaire égyptienne）及《古埃及象形文字典》（Dictionnaire égyptien en écriture hiéroglyphique）則在他死後出版。
主要著作
- 《埃及語語法》（Grammaire égyptienne）
- 《埃及語詞典》（Dictionnaire égyptien）
- 《象形文字入門》（Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens）
- 《埃及萬神殿》（Panthéon égyptien）
參考資料
- Dewachter, Michel. 第二章：閱讀歷史，創造歷史—「跟自己說科普特語」. 《埃及學家商博良：破解古埃及文的天才》. 發現之旅. 68. 呂淑蓉/譯. 臺北: 時報文化. 2003年8月20日: 第30–31頁 [2017年12月18日]. ISBN 978-957-13-3937-5. （原始內容存檔於2018年6月20日） （中文（臺灣））.
Grave of Champollion in Père Lachaise Cemetery (Paris)- Author: Michel Dewachter
- Publisher: Éditions Gallimard (Volume 96 in the Découvertes Gallimard collection)
- Publication Date: November 23, 1990
Jean-François Champollion | |
|---|---|
 Portrait by Léon Cogniet, 1831 | |
| Born | 23 December 1790 Figeac, France |
| Died | 4 March 1832 (aged 41) Paris, France |
| Education | Collège de France Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales |
| Known for | Decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs |
| Spouse | Rosine Blanc (m. 1818) |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac (brother) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Egyptian hieroglyphs |
Jean-François Champollion (French: [ʒɑ̃ fʁɑ̃swa ʃɑ̃pɔljɔ̃]), also known as Champollion le jeune ('the Younger'; 23 December 1790 – 4 March 1832), was a French philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology. Partially raised by his brother, the scholar Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac, Champollion was a child prodigy in philology, giving his first public paper on the decipherment of Demotic in his late teens. As a young man he was renowned in scientific circles, and read Coptic, Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic.
During the early 19th century, French culture experienced a period of 'Egyptomania', brought on by Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt during his campaign there (1798–1801), which also brought to light the trilingual Rosetta Stone. Scholars debated the age of Egyptian civilization and the function and nature of the hieroglyphic script, which language if any it recorded, and the degree to which the signs were phonetic (representing speech sounds) or ideographic (recording semantic concepts directly). Many thought that the script was used only for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical ideas, and did not record historical information. The significance of Champollion's decipherment was that he showed these assumptions to be wrong, and made it possible to begin to retrieve many kinds of information recorded by the ancient Egyptians.
Champollion lived in a period of political turmoil in France, which continuously threatened to disrupt his research in various ways. During the Napoleonic Wars, he was able to avoid conscription, but his Napoleonic allegiances meant that he was considered suspect by the subsequent Royalist regime. His own actions, sometimes brash and reckless, did not help his case. His relations with important political and scientific figures of the time, such as Joseph Fourier and Silvestre de Sacy, helped him, although in some periods he lived exiled from the scientific community.
Obelisk: A HistoryThe many meanings of obelisks across nearly forty centuries, from Ancient Egypt (which invented them) to twentieth-century America (which put them in Hollywood epics). Nearly every empire worthy of the name—from ancient Rome to the United States—has sought an Egyptian obelisk to place in the center of a ceremonial space. Obelisks—giant standing stones, invented in Ancient Egypt as sacred objects—serve no practical purpose. For much of their history their inscriptions, in Egyptian hieroglyphics, were completely inscrutable. Yet over the centuries dozens of obelisks have made the voyage from Egypt to Rome, Constantinople, and Florence; to Paris, London, and New York. New obelisks and even obelisk-shaped buildings rose as well—the Washington Monument being a noted example. Obelisks, everyone seems to sense, connote some very special sort of power. This beautifully illustrated book traces the fate and many meanings of obelisks across nearly forty centuries—what they meant to the Egyptians, and how other cultures have borrowed, interpreted, understood, and misunderstood them through the years. In each culture obelisks have taken on new meanings and associations. To the Egyptians, the obelisk was the symbol of a pharaoh's right to rule and connection to the divine. In ancient Rome, obelisks were the embodiment of Rome's coming of age as an empire. To nineteenth-century New Yorkers, the obelisk in Central Park stood for their country's rejection of the trappings of empire just as it was itself beginning to acquire imperial power. And to a twentieth-century reader of Freud, the obelisk had anatomical and psychological connotations. The history of obelisks is a story of technical achievement, imperial conquest, Christian piety and triumphalism, egotism, scholarly brilliance, political hubris, bigoted nationalism, democratic self-assurance, Modernist austerity, and Hollywood kitsch—in short, the story of Western civilization. |
