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Jean-François Champollion ( December 23, 1790 - March 4, 1832) is remembered particularly for one achievement: the translation of the Rosetta stone, which became the basis of the study of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
He was born at Figeac, Lot, in France and showed an extraordinary linguistic talent, even as a child. By the age of twenty he had mastered several languages, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Amharic, Sanskrit, Avestan, PahlaviPahlavi is a term used in two senses, to mean (1) the Zoroastrian or Sassanid Middle Persian language; and (2) the script used to write (religious and secular) Sassanid Middle Persian and closely similar material, also known as the Pahlavi alphabet ., ArabicArabic is a Semitic language, fairly closely related to, for instance, the Hebrew language and the Aramaic language, spoken throughout the Arab world and widely known outside it. It has been a literary language for over 1500 years, and is the liturgical l, SyriacSyriac is an Eastern Aramaic language which used to be spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Classification Syriac is a member of the Afro-Asiatic language family, the Semitic language sub-family, the West Semitic language branch, and the Aramaic la, Chaldean, PersianPersian , also known as Farsi (local name), Parsi Tajiki or Dari is a language spoken in Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. It has official-language status in the first three countries. There are over 75 million native speakers. It belongs to t and ChineseThe Chinese language (/, /, or ; pinyin: hany, huay, or zhongwen) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Although most Chinese view the many varieties of spoken Chinese as a single language, regional variations in spoken language are compara in addition to his native French. In 1809, he became Professor of History at Grenoble. His interest in oriental languages, especially Coptic, led to his being entrusted with the task of deciphering the writing on the recently-discovered Rosetta Stone, and he spent the years 1822-1824 on this task, greatly expanding the works of Thomas Young on the area, which proved the key to the study of Egyptology. He also identified the importance of the Turin King List.
Subsequently created Professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France.