p8
フーリエとエジプト学
T. W. K\”{o}rner, Fourier Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 1988) のChapter
92 “Who was Fourier? I” (p477) には次のようにある:
Apart from this prefectorial duties Fourier helped organise the Description of Egypt. This work written by the intellectuals attached to the Egyptian expedition did much to inspire European interest in Egypt and was thus one of the two permanent results of that expedition. (The other was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a trilingual inscription which was to provide the key to the deciphering of hieroglyphics) Fourier’s main contribution was the general introduction — a survey of Egyptian history up to modern times, (An Egyptologist with whom I discussed this described the introduction as a masterpiece and a turning point in the subject. He was surprised to hear that Fourier also had a reputation as a mathematician.) On a personal level he encouraged Champollion, a linguistic infant prodigy, to take up Egyptology and used his position as prefect to preserve his protege from conscription. It was Champollion who eventually deciphered the Rosetta Stone.
シャンポリオンとヤング
Barthélemy 1 and Zoëga had come to the conclusion long before the labours of Akerblad, Young, and Champollion, that the cartouches contained proper names. Akerblad drew up an alphabet of the demotic character, in which fourteen signs appear to have had correct values attributed to them. Young published a demotic alphabet in which the greater number of Akerblad’s results were absorbed; he fixed the correct values to six hieroglyphic characters, and to three others partly correct values; he identified the names of Ptolemy and Alexander, the numerals and several gods' names. Champollion published a demotic alphabet, the greater part of which he owed, without question, to Akerblad, and a hieroglyphic alphabet of which six characters had had correct values assigned to them by Young, and the values of three others had been correctly stated as far as the consonants were concerned. There is no doubt whatever that Champollion's plan of work was eminently scientific, and his great knowledge of Coptic enabled him to complete the admirable work of decipherment, which his natural talent had induced him to undertake. The value of his contributions to the science of Egyptology it would be difficult to overestimate, and the amount of work which he did in his comparatively short life is little less than marvelous. It is, however, to be regretted that Champollion did not state more clearly what Young had done, for a full acknowledgment of this would have in no way injured or lessened his own immortal fame.
(2) Andrew Robinson, A clash of symbols N 483 27 (2012)
``Champollion was firmly on the wrong track in the first half of 1821. It was Young’s 1819 article, especially its tentative hieroglyphic ‘alphabet’, that reoriented Champollion and set him on the right path. Without it, Champollion might never have made his great breakthrough of 1822.
So the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs required both a polymath and a specialist to crack the code, even if Champollion would never admit it in public. Young’s myriad-mindedness provided some key initial insights in 1814–19, but then his versatility slowed his progress.’’