This must have been so exciting to decipher.
It's hard, now, to imagine non-professionals devoting this kind of dedication.
A New History of the Rosetta Stone
How the Rosetta Stone Yielded Its Secrets
The quest to decode hieroglyphic writing
At sixteen, Champollion presented his first paper, on place-names in ancient Egypt, and announced to the Grenoble Society of Sciences and the Arts that he was going to decipher the hieroglyphs and reconstruct the history of pharaonic Egypt. He devoted himself to that project for the rest of his life. Dolnick takes Champollion as a sort of paragon of the scientific mind, above all in his willingness to dwell on a problem without ceasing. (He quotes Newton, who, when asked how he arrived at the theory of gravitation, replied, “By thinking on it continually.”) In such an endeavor, it helps to love one’s subject. “Enthusiasm, that is the only life,” Champollion proclaimed. The great moments of his life were his advances in research. After one breakthrough, he gathered up his papers, ran out into the street, and raced to his brother’s office. Bursting through the door, he yelled, “Je tiens l’affaire! ” (“I’ve got it!”), and fainted on the floor.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...ng-of-the-gods
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