Who deciphered hieroglyphs?
Many people worked on deciphering hieroglyphs over several hundred years. However, the structure of the script was very difficult to work out. After many years of studying the Rosetta Stone and other examples of ancient Egyptian writing, Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822. How did Champollion decipher hieroglyphs? Champollion could read both Greek and coptic. He was able to figure out what the seven demotic signs in coptic were. By looking at how these signs were used in coptic he was able to work out what they stood for. Then he began tracing these demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs. By working out what some hieroglyphs stood for, he could make educated guesses about what the other hieroglyphs stood for.
