riting which he could find. By
1818 he made many equations between the demotic and the hieroglyphic
characters, and was able to transcribe the demotic names of Ptolemy and
Cleopatra into hieroglyphics. At length, in January 1822, a copy of the
hieroglyphic inscription on the Bankes obelisk, which had long been
fruitlessly in the hands of Young, reached the French savant. On the
base of this obelisk was engraved a Greek inscription in honour of
Ptolemy Euergetes II. and Cleopatra; of the two cartouches on the
obelisk one was of Ptolemy, the other was easily recognized as that of
Cleopatra, spelt nearly as in Champollion's experimental transcript of
the demotic name, only more fully. This discovery, and the recognition
of the name Alexander, gave fourteen alphabetic signs, including
homophones, with ascertained values. Starting from these, by the
beginning of September Champollion had analysed a long series of
Ptolemaic and Roman cartouches. His next triumph was on the 14th of
September, when he read the names of the ancient Pharaohs Rameses and
Tethmosis in some drawings just arrived from Egypt, proving that his
alphabetic characters were employed, in conjunction with syllabic signs,
for spelling native names; this gave him the assurance that his
discovery touched the essential nature of the Egyptian writing and not
merely, as had been contended, a special cipher for the foreign words
which might be quite inapplicable to the rest of the inscriptions. His
progress continued unchecked, and before the end of the year the
connexion of ancient Egyptian and Coptic was clearly established.
Subsequently visits to the museums of Italy and an expedition to Egypt
in 1828-1829 furnished Champollion with ample materials. The _Precis du
systeme hieroglyphique_ (1st ed. 1823, 2nd ed. 1828) contained the
philological results of his decipherments down to a certain point. But
his MS. collections were vast, and his illness after the strenuous
labours of the expedition and his early death in 1832 left all in
confusion. The _Grammaire egyptienne_ and _Dictionnaire egyptien_,
edited from these MSS. by his brother, precious as they were, must be a
very imperfect register of the height of his attainments. In his last
years he was able to translate long texts in hieroglyphic and in
hieratic of the New Kingdom and of the later periods with some
accuracy, and his comprehension of demotic was considerable. Champollion
outdistanced all his competitor