How did the Coptic language help Champollion in uncovering the secrets of hieroglyphic writing?

Jean-François Champollion and the Coptic Language: Unlocking the Secrets of Hieroglyphics

In 1809 Champollion wrote to his brother Jacques-Joseph I am completely Coptic. I want to be as good in Coptic as I am in French because My Great work on papyri will be based on it

In this letter Champollion explains the basics of his big project to decipher the hieroglyphics using coptic. He will solve what had puzzled linguists for centuries. He will uncover the secrets of one of the oldest civilizations.

ancient Egyptian texts and Coptic writings are a window into Egypt’s history and culture. The Egyptian language in all its forms gives us exact knowledge of Egyptian thinking throughout the ages. This continuity allowed Egypt to go beyond the stone age and leave other ancient societies behind

the egyptian language was written in four scripts throughout its history. The first three hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic were pictographic. The fourth script Coptic was alphabetic using greek letters and demotic symbols for certain sounds. Coptic is the last stage of the Egyptian language

a book titled “History of the Coptic Language” in the Coptic Notebooks series by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina says: When the arabs came to Egypt,greek was the language of the educated and the elite, coptic was the language of the common people and some Foreigners in Egypt who knew it for everyday use..

Coptic made egyptian writing from pictographs to an alphabetic system because it included vowels, an element missing in earlier scripts

French scholar Jean-Luc Fournet’s book multilingual Environment in Late Ancient egypt: Greek Latin, Coptic, and Persian documentation” says early Coptic stages didn’t use any previous Egyptian writing systems. Instead the coptic alphabet was formed using Greek letters and some demotic symbols for Egyptian sounds

Champollion was born on december 23, 1790 in Figeac france. Due to the turmoil after the French Revolution he got private lessons in Latin and Greek instead of formal education. He later went to high school in Grenoble where his brother Jacques-Joseph worked at the French Research Institute and he Developed an early interest in ancient languages including Coptic, Arabic, hebrew,chaldean and Syriac

French historian Robert Sole in his book egypt: a French passion says Champollion’s interest in Egypt started through his brothers Connection with Joseph Fourier who was secretary to the scientific mission during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt (1798-1801 fourier’s collection of objects sparked Champollion’s passion for everything Egyptian.

Solé says Fourier introduced Champollion to papyrus scrolls and hieroglyphic inscriptions and brought him to visitors like Dom Raphael, a Coptic monk who taught Arabic at the School of Oriental Languages. Champollion’s big break came from studying Coptic, a language no longer spoken except in Christian religious rituals and written in Greek letters.

Champollion’s Coptic was helped by a Coptic priest named Yohanna Chiftichi who came to France in 1802. Champollion mentions this priest in a letter to his brother on April 21, 1809, where he writes about his progress in deciphering hieroglyphics. Jean Lacouture writes about this letter in “Champollion: A Life of Light.”

“My Coptic language is going well, I am very happy,” wrote Champollion. “Imagine my pleasure in speaking the language of my dear Amenhotep III, Seti, Ramses and Thutmose!... I will meet with a Coptic priest named Chiftichi at the Saint Roch Church to learn more about Coptic names and letter pronunciation.”

Egyptian historian Anwar Louca in his short study “Yohanna Chiftichi, Champollion’s Teacher” says Chiftichi lived in Paris’s Saint Roch Street and taught Champollion Coptic pronunciation. British historian Andrew Robinson in “Cracking the Egyptian Code: The Unique Life of Jean-François Champollion” notes that Chiftichi worked for the French army in Egypt and later helped the scientific committee publish “Description de l’Égypte.”

Champollion’s Coptic studies led him to compile a dictionary of its dialects, to translate phrases and to speak Coptic with himself. In an 1809 letter he wrote: “I only dream in Coptic, I only speak Coptic, I am consumed by it.” Historian Robert Solé mentions an 1812 letter where Champollion says he has found the key to the hieroglyphic system: “This Coptic study is the key to the hieroglyphic system and I have found it.”

As he studied hieroglyphics, Champollion compared the letters in the names “Cleopatra” and “Ptolemy” and noticed the shared sounds and deduced the phonetic values. He wrote in his “Letter to M. Dacier” in October 1822: “To express sounds, Egyptians used hieroglyphs representing objects whose names began with the sound.”

At 31, Champollion announced his discovery at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres on September 14, 1822, after 20 years of studying ancient languages, mainly Coptic. His findings were published two years later in “Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens” (Summary of the Hieroglyphic System of the Ancient Egyptians” and in “Letter to M. Dacier”.

Champollion’s work opened a new era in Egyptology because of his Coptic knowledge.