François, who, at the age of twelve, was already fully master of the classic languages, had, surrounded by the rich collection of books placed in his brother's care, drifted into a territory which is not embraced in the usual high-school curriculum, viz., the Oriental languages. While still at school, and during his leisure hours, he mastered with wonderful energy, aided as it was by an almost phenomenal power for acquiring knowledge, the Hebrew and most other Semitic languages, as also Sanscrit and Persian. As, however, Egypt had the greatest attraction for him, he also studied the Coptic dialect, the language of the Egyptians during the early centuries after Christ, which was written in Greek letters with some few others added. Withal, the remarkable youth was cheerful and companionable, finding time even to practise his poetic gifts; nor did his physical development suffer through the severe exertion of his mind. His portrait, in the Louvre in Paris, represents him in manhood with bronzed skin, easily allowing him to be recognized as a native of the South of France. His nose is slightly bent, his forehead lofty, his hair black and of great abundance. The dark eyes, shaded by heavy brows, express serenity—earnest and profound sincerity—while his well-formed mouth gives evidence of winning manners and the friendliness of his nature.
At the age of seventeen he submitted his first work, a geography of ancient Egypt, to the Academy of Grenoble, which, notwithstanding his extreme youth, conferred upon him the degree of associate. Soon after he followed a course of lectures at the Oriental College of Paris. With youthful zeal he availed himself of the numerous educational advantages at his disposal in this great city, and gained even then the notice of the most prominent men of his profession. After two years' time, not quite twenty years of age, he was called to a position at the University of Grenoble.
When Napoleon rested in this town on his way from Elba to Paris, in 1815, he appointed the elder Champollion as his private secretary.
The close relationship into which this position brought Figeac to the emperor, and his republican ideas after Napoleon's downfall—which ideas were shared by his brother François—were circumstances which, in later years, became great obstacles to their further advancement. They were looked upon as characters dangerous to the state, and were deprived of their positions, while the Institute of France even withheld from François its protection.
The brothers were banished to their old homestead, Figeac, where they found leisure in abundance to complete several unfinished works; and when in 1818, through the influence of the Duke of Decazes, their banishment was pronounced at an end, François had completed his great work, "L'Égypte sous les Pharaons."
This work, of the utmost importance at the time, in the preparation of which the Coptic sources were freely drawn upon, won François his lost chair at the Grenoble University. After he had secured this post he was encouraged to found a home of his own. Rose Blanc was the bride-elect, with whom he was united in a most happy marriage until his death.
Since many years François had occupied himself with the monument which gave promise to the possibility of deciphering hieroglyphics.
During the French expedition, as it happened, the talisman was found which was to become the key to disclose the mystery of the language and the written signs of the Ancient Egyptians—the tablet or the key of Rosetta, a stone-plate made of black granite. Three inscriptions, written in different signs, covered the originally rectangular surface of the tablet. The uppermost one, considerably injured, showed the hieroglyphics, which were familiar through the obelisks and other Egyptian monuments; the second inscription was obscure; while the third and lowest inscription, which had suffered but little injury, consisted of Greek letters clear to every philologist. It proclaimed that the tablet contained a decree of the Egyptian priesthood, in honor of the fifth king of the house of the Ptolemies, and that this was written in the holy language, in that of the people of Egypt, and in Greek, on the same tablet. Here was, therefore, a somewhat extensive text in two of the three modes of writing of the Egyptians of which Clemens of Alexandria makes mention, with a Greek translation of the same. The fortunes of war brought this extraordinary monument into the hands of the English. It was placed in the British Museum, and care was taken that copies of the three inscriptions should reach the various Egyptologists, among them Champollion.
The demotic inscription—that is to say, the text in the writing of the people, was one of the most inviting to decipher, because the signs composing it seemed to be letters representing sound. This was sedulously attempted by several scientists, and with the best results by the great French Orientalist, De Sacy, and by the Swede, Akerblad. But though the former by a mechanical method recognized correctly the meaning of several groups, and though Akerblad had even ascertained most of the signs of the demotic alphabet, still they were both incapable of discerning the elements of which the demotic writing is composed.
The great English physician and naturalist, Thomas Young, who also occupied himself with the three various texts, made better progress. Taking advantage and making use of the parts that had been revealed to him by demotic and hieroglyphic text, he succeeded, in a mechanical way, and by intelligent comparisons in deciphering the names Ptolemaios and Berenike, and in recognizing even the hieroglyphic signs for numbers. Still the true nature of the Egyptian writing was not revealed to him either. In their particulars his ascertainments are untrue, for in the names he had in no way discovered the alphabetic signs of which they were composed.