Egyptomania
-comes with treaty signed between newly-declared Sultanate of Egypt and French Republic in 1845
-which begins process of Egypt becoming a French protectorate
-France sends an immense number of savants as had previously kicked off in Ireland
-kicks off period of immense Egyptomania in France
-mostly in France itself due to French conquest of France
-truly kicks off after French Wars > Third French War (1847-54)
-only really declines after a while
Deciphering of hieroglyphics
-nobody ever discovers Rosetta Stone
-it's lost to history
-and by pure chance Philae Obelisk not really discovered until pretty late
-nor any other bilingual documents
-instead a French scholar at a university, Yves-François Pinchot, successfully decodes it in the era of the Belle Epoch
-theorizes that Coptic is a direct descendant of Egyptian
-learns Coptic from the small but growing number of Copts who settle in France, particularly Paris, due to its use in liturgy
-first determines which form of Coptic has the least number of Greek loanwords based on grammars and the like, then back-projects Coptic based on outdated features
-and on this basis engages in a very complicated process of mapping Coptic to Demotic, with ample number of Demotic documents brought over or else copied
-based on patterns and some intuition is able to come up with partial translations as well as plausible translations
-this is done with first, identifying characters in cartouches as names, and then matching against known names
-additionally using cuneiform bilingual inscriptions to that purpose
-but they're small inscriptions
-from this step engages in very complex process of trial-and-error to decode Demotic
-to ease this process a friend directs him towards Analyzers > Grand Analyzers of the Hydraulic Era, the Grand Analyzer of Paris due to its use in decoding German codes in French Wars > Fifth French War (1892-5)
-this friend, a mathematician, writes general guide for programmers to make a program out of
-the programmers disregarded until recently as an irrelevant "harem" doing grunt work
-each glyph is identified with a code, and then it is calculated how many times they appear, and where they appear - in what position they appear
-with his knowledge, Pinchot then is able to identify glyphs with Coptic
-help of function words and his knowledge of Coptic
-cryptography therefore used to an end - it's as if they're decrypting a code in a lost Coptic dialect based on several back-projections
-is a very expensive process but he's well connected enough to do it, and receives trial-and-error translations through telegraph
-with enough trial-and-error, in 1904 finally comes up with a large repository of hieroglyphics to demotics to words
-and determines it is not logographic nor phonetic but a combination of the two
-builds theory of determinatives to ensure this
-but some controversy - no checksum
-dies in 1907, many people still filled with doubt on its veracity
-discovery of Philae Obelisk and other bilingual documents, incl. one bilingual between cuneiform and Egyptian, verifies discovery to posterity
Discovery of Tutankhamun's Tomb
-discovered in 1943
-immediately after French Wars > Sixth French War (1937-41)
-this becomes an incredibly important moment for Egyptian nationalism and enshrines a degree of Pharaonism which becomes a part of it
-due to protests France does not take King Tut (aside from some parts of his tomb) to the Louvre and instead it is deposited in the National Museum of Cairo
-results in renewed wave of Egyptomania with global influence
-as well as enduring influence on Egyptian nationalism
-many translated Ancient Egyptian texts circulate in its wake