"I got it... I got it...I figured out what the letters on the stone mean..We will catch that ancient civilization". On a hot night in the summer of 1822, with those separated phrases,The French scientist" John Francoi chambollion" leapt and shouted with great pleasure, the gloss in his eyes suggests that he has just find out a great discover ,Or maybe it's the greatest discovery in human history.

More than two decades before that moment, specifically in the second winter of the French campaign in 1799.During the inspection of lieutenant "Pierre francois boushar", the castle of Julian, two kilometres from the city of "Rasheed",He found a quite small monument of black basalt  which is 113 centimeters high,75 centimeters wide ,  27.5  centimeters thick,It contains inscriptions written in 196 B.C,In the era of the Ptolemaic state,It was aroyal decree came out of the city of "Manf" of three texts,The upper text is the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics,The middle part is of demoticism,and the low part  is of ancient Greek.

In that room inside the French lab and after many years of research."Chambollion",That young Frenchman who couldn't go to school when he was a kid.but he was too brilliant to read the works of Homerus and Virgilius before he was 9 years old.He also was a brilliant genius when he was 17  as he did a research of the Coptic origin of names of egyptian place  in the works of Greek and latin authors What qualified him to decode hieroglyphics before he reaches the age of thirty by comparing the three languages together .The day after he decoded the hieroglyphics, he convinced the west that there should be a science of egyptians or  Egyptology for the Egyptian civilization to have its own science among the others of the ancient,the intermediate and the modern world  , which archaeologists all over the world are chasing searching for to find out secrets of ancient civilization that still offers us every day what is new.

Surprisingly, Although "Egyptology" is about Egyptian civilization,The good follower to its most important symbols and the influencials in it will notice that most people who are interested in it are foreigners especially French, German, English and American.

Egyptology progress

Most historians assert that the ancient egyptians were the first Egyptology scientists,King Tohotmus IV, who ruled from 1401 to 1391 B.C was the first  to interest in Egyptology,, And that the removal of sand around the Sphinx because of the dream  he saw was his first act and he left a sign tells the details of this dream and after two centuries of the rule of Tohotmus IV,The Prince "Kha Em Wast" son of King "Ramses II"  excavated and restorated the ruins of monuments of his ancient ancestors like temples and cemeteries and buildings,Including the pyramid of King "Ounas" in Saqqara to be the first restorer of the antiquities in Egyptology.

It has been centuries since the ancient egyptians dominated the science of "egyptology" until the seventh century revealed the interest of greeks and romans in the study of  egyptology and what has reached us  from the history of historians such as the Greek "Herodot",The Greek "strabon",and the Athenian "solon",The Sicilian "diodorus" and the roman "Yusephus flavius", the historian of the jews is enough .Let us not forget that most of our history was presented to us by the Egyptian priest "Maniton" that Egyptian from" samnoud" in Gharbia,He also was a priest in the reign of king" Ptolemy ii"  280 B.C.E., who assigned him to write the history of ancient Egypt which became the first  Egyptology reference .

Many years passed, until the age of Muslim scholars,They had contributed in Egyptology which revealed many of the secrets of ancient Egyptian civilization,The first known attempt was by Egyptian "Zi El Noun" or "Thoban Ben Ibrahim"The most famous historian from Sohag who lived from 796 to 859 A.D,One of his most famous works is " deciphering Symbols and Numbers in Revealing the Origins of Languages and lines",He is considered one of the Arab scholars who preceded "Champollion" in deciphering the hieroglyphic alphabet.

And there is "Ben Wahshia El Nabaty"  or "Abu Bakr Ahmad bin Ali bin Qais bin Mukhtar bin Abdul Karim bin Harthia bin Badnia bin Boratia Kardzani"who died in 930 AD,He discovered that hieroglyphic symbols are just voice symbols,And he analyzed many of those symbols before chambellion's discovery.Some even believed that Champollion had read the manuscript of "Shawq Al mustaham in the knowledge of the symbols and lines" that he wrote before discovering the symbols of Rosetta Stone.

Egyptology thieves

At the beginning of the third century, At the beginning of the modern state,A large number of European researchers and tour writers have appeared in Egypt searching for historical discoveries.Although they were mostly engaged in theft and smuggling of antiquities, their observations and writings did provide much information. Although they were mistaken in the most information, they followed scientific methods that influenced the historical movement.The most important of all is the british astronomer and Orientalist"John Gravs" who is one of the most important pyramid scholars,The French priest" Claud secard"was the first to produce a map of Egypt in 1711,And the danish explorer captain "Frederick Lewis Norden",And the American "Kan Richard Boucock" the governor of Texas and the former senator,The German historian "Athanesius Kircher" is the most important person to do an elementary study of hieroglyphics , and many considered him the father of egyptology sciences.

In the late 18th century, scientists of the Napoleon Bonapart campaign recorded the plant and animal life and the history in the encyclopedia of Egypt's description.The egyptian study took  more serious scientific form after discoverying the rosetta stone in 1822 to start a new phase of Egyptology,A phase in which history is written according to excavations, papyrus, paintings and inscriptions on the walls of temples and cemeteries.

After the stone

In 1928, almost six years after chambollion decoded the hieroglyphic symbols.The first mission that could be classified as scientific in feature, It was not exploratory objective but aimed at research in the first place.The mission included a number of scholars interested in Egyptology including the French" francois chamblion" and his friend "Nestor lout" who has been described as a superior egyptian in addition to the Italian "Apollito rossellini".

Truth be told, that mission had a significant impact on organizing of archaeological life in Egypt.As soon as they reached Egypt, they got permission to excavate from the ruler of Egypt, "Mohammed Ali Pasha",They explored 50 sites and recorded their observations in six volumes.Things were going pretty easy for anyone who wanted to dig up Egyptian antiquities.Chambollion rushed to the governor of Egypt, presenting his first written petition of its kind,He proposed to organize excavations and to impose laws to prevent theft and smuggling of Egyptian antiquities, but unfortunately found no response.

Two years after that tragic event, the leader of Egypt's scientific Renaissance, "Refaah Rafea Al-Tahtawi", who is not yet 30 years old, came to know chambollion's advice,He was the first egyptian scientist of egyptology, who also petitioned for Mohammed ali pasha,But for the second time he took no action until the Frenchman "August mariet"who received "al pashaweya"as a confession of his contribution to the preservation of Egyptian monuments.