Philology and the Appropriation of the World: Champollion’s Hieroglyphs

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This book sheds new light on the work of Jean-Francois Champollion by uncovering a constellation of epistemological, political, and material conditions that made his decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs possible. Champollion is one of the most dazzling figures in the European history of science; his success in understanding hieroglyphs, first published in his Lettre a M. Dacier in 1822, is emblematic for the triumphant achievements of comparative philology during the 19th Century. In its attempt to understand humanity as part of a grand history of progress, Champollion’s conception of ancient Egypt belongs to the universalistic aspirations of European modernity. Yet precisely because of its success, his project also reveals the costs it entailed: after examining and welcoming acquisitions for the emerging collections of the Egyptian departments in Turin and in the Louvre, Champollion travelled to the Nile Valley in 1828/29, where he was shocked by the damage that had been done to its ancient cultural sites. The letter he wrote to the Egyptian viceroy Mehmet Ali Pasha in 1829 demands that excavations in Egypt be regulated, denounces European looting, and represents perhaps the first document to make a case for the international protection of cultural goods in the name of humanity.