1822: The day hieroglyphs spoke again, after fourteen centuries of silence

On September 27, 1822, in Paris, before the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, a text was read: the writing of the ancient Egyptians had just been deciphered. Its author, Jean-François Champollion, was 31 years old. His letter was addressed to Bon-Joseph Dacier, perpetual secretary of the Academy; according to the BnF, it is dated September 22.

Champollion demonstrated that hieroglyphs were not a mystical code, but a system that was simultaneously figurative, symbolic, and phonetic. He succeeded by cross-referencing the Rosetta Stone and the Philae obelisk, where the cartouche of Cleopatra provided decisive equivalents. The British scholar Thomas Young had preceded him with partial results; Champollion would acknowledge his priority in 1831.

A stone taken from Rashid

The object that made everything possible is not French: it is Egyptian. The Rosetta Stone was unearthed in July 1799 near Rosetta—modern-day Rashid, in the Nile Delta—by officer Pierre-François Bouchard during Bonaparte's expedition. This granodiorite block, weighing approximately 760 kilograms, bears a decree from 196 BCE, under Ptolemy V, engraved in hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Ancient Greek.

After the French capitulation on August 30, 1801, the British seized it. Exhibited at the British Museum since June 1802, it is now the museum's most visited object. It has never returned to Egypt.

"War booty"

In November 2022, two Egyptian petitions demanded its return: one by archaeologist Monica Hanna gathered 4,200 signatures, and another by Zahi Hawass, former Minister of Antiquities, gathered over 100,000. The texts describe the seizure as an "act of looting." The British Museum responds that the 1801 agreement was signed by an Ottoman admiral and that no official request from Cairo has been received; the Egyptians object that their country, then under Ottoman rule, was not represented. The museum holds more than 100,000 Egyptian and Sudanese artifacts.

Returning the Pharaohs to Africa

What this September 27 opened up was direct access to millennia of texts written on African soil, after fourteen centuries of silence: the last known hieroglyphic inscription dates back to 394 CE, at Philae. The Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986) turned this into a scientific battle, from "Nations nègres et culture" (1954) to his chapter "Origin of the Ancient Egyptians" in the General History of Africa published by UNESCO in 1984. His conclusions remain debated: historian François-Xavier Fauvelle criticizes him, according to Jeune Afrique, for making "certain facts speak to demonstrate a conviction."

Key takeaways

On September 27, 1822, Champollion gave a voice back to ancient Egypt thanks to a stone found in Rashid, which is still on display in London. Deciphering an African civilization and possessing it are two distinct things: the latter remains a matter of justice.