The Linguist and the Emperor (20 page)

Champollion allows for the possibility of homophones, or two different signs expressing the same sound, in this case “S.”

He leaves the realm of speculation, though, when he comes to the interlocking “K” of Kleopatra, a semicircle or loaf of bread:
; and the “K” of Alexander, a basket with a handle:         
.

For here his knowledge of the scripts comes into play and he realizes that the demotic script form of the bread-loaf “K” in Cleopatra’s name equaled a hieratic script sign which in turn equaled the “K”-basket-with-handle sign in Alexander’s name.

In this way Champollion, unlike Young, proves, and does not merely guess, the existence of homophones—a fact that will eventually account for the huge numbers of letters found in the hieroglyphic alphabet.

Furthermore, he can be reasonably sure that the bread-loaf sign always seen in feminine names would = TE in Coptic, “the” (the feminine form of the article). Again drawing on his wide knowledge of Coptic, he makes the claim that the hand-sign which equals “T” is related to the Coptic word for hand,
TOT—
another example of the way in which initial sounds of words are used as letters (the “acrophonic” principle).

With this established, Champollion goes on to decipher a long list of Greek and Roman cartouches, increasing the letters of his Egyptian alphabet to over forty hieroglyphs which—he still believes—are used only for the writing of foreign names.

But Champollion begins to reconsider: there are five hundred words in the Greek section of the Rosetta stone corresponding to 1,419 hieroglyphic signs in the Egyptian section. If the hieroglyphs each stood for a single word, it would make for a great disproportion.

More important, using his alphabet of hieroglyphs to sound out groups of hieroglyphs, he begins to notice grammatical constructions as he pores over copies of the cartouches inscribed on the obelisks of Rome.

Domition his father Vespasian
is written on the obelisk in the Piazza Navona—the hieroglyphic possessive form the same as the Coptic. Champollion considers the horned viper, the letter “F” in hieroglyphics—
.

In linear hieroglyphics:         

In hieratic:         

In demotic:         

In Coptic:         

It is a letter whose shape and sound not only has remained constant for more than three thousand years but whose function—it is the third person pronoun in both Coptic and ancient Egyptian—remains the same.

In hieroglyphic texts even outside of the cartouches, in texts which could not be foreign names, certain signs—like the horned viper—are encountered again and again, with surprising frequency. If these hieroglyphs are sounds, letters expressing grammatical principles, if they are alphabetical, wouldn’t it mean—couldn’t it be—that the hieroglyphs constitute an alphabet after all, at least in part?

That would account for the frequent repetition of a limited number of signs, a core, scattered among the many hieroglyphic symbols—they would be words like “his” or pronouns, or negations.

Thus, letter by letter, the puzzle of the hieroglyphs is solved. Writing, fragile as a spider’s web and strong as an iron chain, links centuries and millennia of existence.
Domitian
his
father Vespasian. Domitian
his
brother Titus—
the cruel, vain Roman emperor (obsessed with his thinning hair!) chooses to preserve his Roman name in Egyptian symbols on an obelisk. More than a thousand years later, Innocent X will raise the fallen monument and call it by his family name: the Pamphili obelisk. A famed Jesuit scholar, Athanasius Kircher, will misinterpret the writing on it, leaving behind many “learned” volumes of absurdities. And two hundred years later, Jean François will come to study in Rome and he will stand in Piazza Navonna, the square where gladiators once fought and Christian saints died. Champollion will gaze at the obelisk as they had. He will contemplate it by day and by night. And he will struggle with the hieroglyphs covering its sides, writing which gives form to the chaos of existence and expression to the terror of time.

EIGHT HUNDRED MILES
to the south of Cairo—on the border of the Sudan—the strongman Belzoni spends week after week, month after month, supervising his
fellahin
as they clear Ramesses’ great temple at Abu Simbel, together with the pyramids the most colossal monument in all Egypt. And as the peasants cart away the desert sand, Belzoni sketches whatever images and inscriptions come to light. One of his sketches finds its way back to Europe in a letter; and a copy of this copy finds its way to Jean François’ attic room in Paris.

It contains a cartouche that Champollion has never seen before:

The first symbol was the sun, that was clear; and in Coptic the word for sun was Ra. That would give him, Ra
                           
SS, using the alphabet he had developed from the Ptolemaic and Roman cartouches. And of course, by reading
  as “M” or “Mes” that would be the famed pharaoh Ramesses, he realizes, whose name had been recorded by the Greeks and Romans.

He begins to tremble with excitement. Here was an
ancient
pharaoh, an
Egyptian
pharaoh whose name was written in phonetic symbols, in letters, in the same way that the names of foreign kings were written. Champollion searches frantically through the rest of the Abu Simbel papers, looking for another cartouche to confirm what he already knows is true. There, among the sketches of the toiling
fellahin
and gigantic temple pillars, is another unfamiliar cartouche: