Description

Jacques-Joseph CHAMPOLLION-FIGEAC (1778 – 1867).

Paris: Lithographie de Clouet, 1843.

Demotic (from the Ancient Greek: dēmotikós, meaning ‘popular’) is an Egyptian script that was used in Lower Egypt (the Nile Delta) between c. 560 BC and the 5th century AD, that was a critical link between Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics and medieval Coptic script. For centuries, until the early 19th century, the comprehension of Demotic had been forgotten, and all initial attempts to decipher it proved fruitless. As a result, a massive amount of vitally important information from the Egyptian-Mediterranean world was (at least temporarily) lost to human consciousness.

The discovery of the Rosetta Strone in Lower Egypt, in 1799, marked a watershed moment in the study of Ancient languages and the unlocking of knowledge. The stone features the same text translated into Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Ancient Greek. Painstakingly, the French linguist Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy, employing the Greek text, managed to decipher the Demotic script on the tablet (although much of Demotic remained enigmatic).

Enter Jean-François Champollion (1790 – 1832), the towering genius of oriental and ancient philology. A chaotic and financially irresponsible character, who relied upon his more level- headed older brother, the esteemed archaeologist Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac (1778 – 1867), to ‘bail him out’ of trouble and advance his career, Champollion was the first to successfully decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphics as written upon the Rosetta Stone. His breakthrough revealed in his Lettre à M. Dacier relative à l’alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques (1822), was largely accomplished by improving upon Silvestre de Sacy’s understanding of Demotic. Thus, it was Demotic that proved the key to unlocking Hieroglyphics and all the inexhaustible treasure trove of information that it would yield. Champollion’s work is rightly recognized as the greatest ever accomplishment in philology and the recovery of lost languages.

Despite the breakthrough, there were still many elements of both Demotic and Hieroglyphics that were yet to be deciphered, or, at the least, properly contextualized. Champollion spent the rest of his life upon improving, and hopefully perfecting, the understanding of Demotic and Hieroglyphics. Tragically, due to his health having been ruined by an expedition to Egypt, Champollion died at only the age of 41, leaving much of his writings unpublished, generally in the form of rough notes.

Fortunately, Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac, an esteemed archaeologist, a former professor, and the keeper of manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale, was a skilled philologist (even if he did not possess his late brother’s virtuosity) who had the drive and ability to analyze Jean-François’s unpublished papers. He painstakingly editing, and in some cases completed, these works, publishing them over the years, often in the form of open letters to other distinguished academics (a common practice at the time).

The Present Work in Focus

Ecriture démotique égyptienne, Lettre de Mr. Champollion-Figeac, à Mr. Ch. Lenormant (7 février 1843), comes in the form of an open letter written by Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac to his friend and fellow esteemed archaeologist Charles Lenormant (1802 – 1859), that was communicated to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres on February 10, 1843. A brief pamphlet, published in only a very small print run in an improvised, rather crude technique of lithography, it is nevertheless an very important work on Demotic script.

Here, Champollion-Figeac, heavily drawing upon and citing upon his late brother’s work, seeks to broaden and refine the understanding of Demotic, including its relationship to conventional Hieroglyphics and Hieratic, a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

While a somewhat sophisticated understanding of the philology of the scripts tis necessary to fully comprehend the work, in essence, Champollion-Figeac outlines 8 ‘Propositions’ for properly understanding Demotic, asserting that it is “purely Alphabetical in nature” while clearing up some key questions with regards to the correct usage of articles and other grammatical matters.

This is followed by two fascinating charts (on pp. 10 and 11), with No. 1 showing the (vertically) parallel characters in Hieroglyphics as they appear on the Rosetta Stone; Demotic as it appears of the Rosetta Stone; and Hieratic script. No. 2 show, in parallel, compares Hieroglyphic ‘Groups’ and Demotic ‘Groups’ as the appeared on the Rosetta Stone.

Finally, on pp. 13-4, Champollion-Figeac provides a list of his late brother’s 12 manuscripts regarding Demotic script, the ‘Liste des Manuscrits de Champollion le Jne. relatif à l’Ecriture démotique égyptienne’.

A Note on Rarity

The present work rare, it was published in an improvised lithographic technique in only a small print run. While we can trace 9 institutional examples, held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France; University of Oxford; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
Huntingdon Library (Burndy); Universitätsbibliothek München; Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de la Sorbonne; BM Lyon; Brown University Library; and the New York Public Library, we are aware of two other examples on the market in the past (one of them owed by Antiquariat Dasa Pahor in 2022).

References: Bibliothèque nationale de France: X-4758; University of Oxford: PJ1801 .CH; Huntingdon Library (Burndy): 753421; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin: 4″@Ur 1-3; OCLC: 43806244.