Just Finished Reading: The Keys of Egypt – The Race to Read the Hieroglyphs by Lesley and Roy Adkins

What little I previously knew of this subject interested me enough. After reading this book I am now officially fascinated. I knew, in a rather vague fashion, that the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt had something to do with the Egypt mania that swept through Europe prior to his defeat in 1815 and I knew that material recovered (or stolen) from Egypt helped fuel investigations into that Ancient civilisation’s great past but that’s as far as it went. I wasn’t aware, until now, of the great efforts made by the genius of Jean-Francois Champollion to decipher the mysterious hieroglyphs and the personal sacrifices he made to be able to do so. I had little idea of the hardships suffered by the savants of the day to travel into the Egyptian interior to recover artefacts and, more importantly, documents that would have been lost without what was, in effect, wholesale grave robbing. Without Champollion’s efforts it is arguable that today we would know almost nothing of ancient Egypt and so much else besides. For that alone he should be seen as a pivotal figure in understanding our collective past.

This well written and often gripping book often reads like a thriller as it follows the work and life of the man who unlocked the deepest secrets of our hidden past. Driven to understand the origins of the world itself Champollion instead uncovered one of the major streams that went into making Western civilisation. His work was certainly that important. Despite living through a time of war, rebellion and revolution Champollion and his brother managed to keep working over long years – indeed decades – on the quest to understand the apparently undecipherable writings on hundreds of tombs and thousands of documents. The effort most certainly hastened his death but the drive to know the truth of things was too strong to resist. His triumph was the ability to read the inscriptions on ancient monuments at a glance and to open up a whole new field of study. The courage of Champollion and his contemporary explorers is amazing. Reading about their exploits in the burning deserts of the Egyptian hinterland made me gasp with amazement and not a little thirst. These men were pioneers in their respective fields and incredibly brave into the bargain. With hindsight we can say that their techniques were questionable – if not actually illegal – but they did save much that would have been destroyed otherwise and this is not something that should be lightly overlooked. Champollion and his colleagues did the world a great favour by doing what they did. This book goes a long way to explaining the reasons behind such acts and the treasures that we all now have access to because of it. A fascinating read about a fascinating period of exploration.