The Science of Secrecy

The ancient Egyptians used the hieroglyphic script for more than 3,000 years, until the spread of Christianity led to a ban, attempting to break this link with the country's pagan past. For the next 1,400 years hieroglyphs remained a mystery, an indecipherable series of ornate symbols that held the key to one of the earliest civilisations. All the great European scholars assumed that hieroglyphs were merely a form of picture-writing, because it seemed unthinkable that such a primitive civilisation could have invented phonetic writing - writing that represents the sounds of a spoken language. In fact, the scholars were wrong.

The race to decipher hieroglyphics began when two child prodigies, Jean-François Champollion in France and Thomas Young in England, began to explore the possibility that hieroglyphs might be a phonetic form of writing. Whoever could first crack the hieroglyphic code would be able to read the words of the ancient Egyptians and so reconstruct their history, understand their religion and gain a deep insight into their culture.

One of the most important clues in deciphering the hieroglyphs was the Rosetta Stone, a large slab containing the same inscription repeated three times, first in hieroglyphs, then in demotic (a variation of hieroglyphs), and finally in comprehensible Greek. Scholars hoped that the Rosetta Stone would act as a dictionary for deciphering hieroglyphs, but the process of reading hieroglyphs was not so straightforward. In particular, there was the problem of establishing the language of the hieroglyphs: the Greek inscription might indicate the meaning of a hieroglyphic word, but it did not give any hint as to its pronunciation. The fear was that the Egyptian language had been lost for ever, replaced by Arabic as the Islamic Empire took over North Africa.

The rivalry between Young and Champollion generated an intense competition to decipher hieroglyphs, which only came to an end after the discovery of further inscriptions and the realisation that the language of the ancient Egyptians was not completely extinct.


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			The ancient Egyptians used the hieroglyphic script for more than 3,000 years, until the spread of Christianity led to a ban, attempting to break this link with the country's pagan past. For the next 1,400 years hieroglyphs remained a mystery, an indecipherable series of ornate symbols that held the key to one of the earliest civilisations. All the great European scholars assumed that hieroglyphs were merely a form of picture-writing, because it seemed unthinkable that such a primitive civilisation could have invented phonetic writing - writing that represents the sounds of a spoken language. In fact, the scholars were wrong. The race to decipher hieroglyphics began when two child prodigies, Jean-François Champollion in France and Thomas Young in England, began to explore the possibility that hieroglyphs might be a phonetic form of writing. Whoever could first crack the hieroglyphic code would be able to read the words of the ancient Egyptians and so reconstruct their history, understand their religion and gain a deep insight into their culture. One of the most important clues in deciphering the hieroglyphs was the Rosetta Stone, a large slab containing the same inscription repeated three times, first in hieroglyphs, then in demotic (a variation of hieroglyphs), and finally in comprehensible Greek. Scholars hoped that the Rosetta Stone would act as a dictionary for deciphering hieroglyphs, but the process of reading hieroglyphs was not so straightforward. In particular, there was the problem of establishing the language of the hieroglyphs: the Greek inscription might indicate the meaning of a hieroglyphic word, but it did not give any hint as to its pronunciation. The fear was that the Egyptian language had been lost for ever, replaced by Arabic as the Islamic Empire took over North Africa. The rivalry between Young and Champollion generated an intense competition to decipher hieroglyphs, which only came to an end after the discovery of further inscriptions and the realisation that the language of the ancient Egyptians was not completely extinct. Top