supercheesegirl

Full title: The Keys of Egypt: The Obsession to Decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Nonfiction; another great library find. Starting with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, this book describes how the ancient Egyptian civilization was rediscovered and how hieroglyphs came to be deciphered. The Rosetta Stone had a lot less to do with it than we were all led to believe. Also, Jean-Francois Champollion is my new goddamn hero. He learned a couple dozen languages and worked on it for over 20 years, while several different revolutions were going on in France and while he was living in poverty, but he's the guy who eventually came up with the method of decipherment that actually worked. He didn't receive nearly enough acclaim during his lifetime--there are apparently *still* people trying to discredit him today, and they were a lot nastier about it then--and he died way too young, at 41. I was really glad to read that he eventually got to go to Egypt, though. That made me happy that he was able to actually go and see it all in person.