1822 — The Day Hieroglyphs Spoke Again

On September 27, 1822, French scholar Jean-François Champollion announced to the Académie des Inscriptions in Paris that he had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs. The key was the Rosetta Stone, unearthed by French troops in Egypt in 1799 and inscribed with the same decree in hieroglyphs, Demotic script, and ancient Greek.

Building on the work of England's Thomas Young, Champollion proved the symbols were both phonetic and ideographic — a full writing system, not mere picture-symbols. Two weeks earlier he had burst into his brother's office shouting "Je tiens mon affaire!" — "I've got it!" — then fainted and spent five days in bed. His breakthrough founded the science of Egyptology.