Jean Francois Champollion

Jean Francois Champollion born in Lot, France.  The last of seven children his upbringing was humble.  His parents could not afford to send him to school but his brother, who was living in Grenoble, began teaching him at the age of eight.

He lived with his brother for several years, and even as a young child was an accomplished linguistic mastering a dozen languages by the age of 20 including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Amharic, Sanskrit, Avestan, Pahlavi, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, Persian and Ge'ez in addition to his native French.

He became assistant-professor of History at Grenoble in 1809 where his interest in oriental languages, led to his deciphering of the writing on the then recently-discovered Rosetta Stone. 

In 1824 his work Précis du système hiéroglyphique began the entire field of modern Egyptology. His fame was also assured with his identification of the importance of the Turin King List, and in dating the Dendera zodiac to the Roman period.

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