Talk:Caylus vase

Significance for hieroglyphs

I think this article overstates the vase's significance for the decipherment of hieroglyphs. I'm not able to read the French-language primary sources that are used here, so I can only base my argument on the secondary sources that I used to write the article on decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts.

The timeline of Champollion's realizations is somewhat unclear, but it seems likely that Champollion was well on his way to realizing that phonetic hieroglyphs were used for Egyptian names before Saint-Martin asked for his opinion on the Caylus vase, which was shortly after Champollion read the Lettre à M. Dacier in late September 1822. In any case, the assumption before Champollion had been that phonetic hieroglyphs were used to write the names of foreign kings. Xerxes was a foreign king, just not a Greek one, so the presence of phonetic glyphs in his cartouche didn't prove that phonetic glyphs were an integral part of the Egyptian system, only that the Egyptians had used phonetic glyphs earlier than Alexander's time. Instead, it seems that the name of Xerxes was only one of many royal names that Champollion was deciphering in late 1822, and some of them were earlier than Xerxes. According to Maurice Pope, in The Story of Decipherment (1999), p. 74, Champollion published a list of thirty pharaohs' names, including that of Xerxes, in the news column of the January 1823 issue of Journal Asiatique. Some of those names were as early as the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, which was made up of native Egyptian kings. A. Parrot (talk) 20:44, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. From what I understand from the sources and from Champollion's own account, Champollion had already extensively theorized that some hieroglyphs were used for phonetical purposes, and indeed had already proposed the phonetic reading of a good quantity of ancient pharaos, before the reading of the Caylus vase. The problem is that some people continued to doubt his system and especially its antiquity, claiming in particular that phonetic hieroglyphs only started to be used from the time of Alexander (rather understandably, since Champollion had only proved his phonetic system on the basis of the names of Greek and Roman rulers found in hieroglyphs on Egyptian monuments). The whole question was whether phonetical hieroglyphs could also be used to read the names of Egyptian pharaos (as reflected in the very title of his chapter "Application of alphabetical hieroglyphs to the names of Pharaos" p.225 in his Précis du système hiéroglyphique published in 1824). Champollion then starts his account of the Caylus vase with "Someone, who strongly doubts the existence of my hieroglyphic alphabet, before the Greeks and the Romans, would be quite convinced that he is wrong, says he, if I could show him the name of Cambyses in phonetical hieroglyphs" (First five lines on this page p.231 of the Précis). Having exposed his recent decipherment of the Caylus vase (which he clarifies is about Xerxes, not Cambyses), he finishes with "It has thus been proved that Egyptian hieroglyphs included phonetic signs, at least since 460 BC: these signs were not invented at the time of the Greeks and the Romans, as some seem to have believed" (middle of page 233). Also, from Saint-Martin's own account, it is clear that it was Champollion's idea to go to the Cabinet des Médailles to analyse the two inscriptions on the Caylus vase, not the other way around ("I had overlooked it, and I had considered that this monument was of no interest to my inquiries (...) but Champollion said he had recognized something that might be an Egyptian cartouche, and thought that the comparison of the two inscriptions could teach us the name of the ruler to whom the cartouche belonged (...) so that we hurried together to visit it" p.86). I will tweak the article to better reflect these points. Thank you! पाटलिपुत्र Pat (talk) 06:56, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification: I'll tweak the decipherment article accordingly. Let me know if you want more detail about the timeline of Champollion's breakthroughs. According to Champollion's nephew, Champollion realized that native Egyptian kings' names incorporated phonetic glyphs several days before he wrote his famous Lettre, and if I understand correctly, he went to look at the Caylus vase shortly afterward. But the nephew's recollection may not be accurate in all particulars (I haven't seen any of the secondary sources question this particular story, but they have questioned other stories that were passed down through the Champollion family), and Champollion may have kept that discovery to himself until he had thoroughly confirmed it. Hence, I think Xerxes' name may have been the first phonetic cartouche from before Alexander's time that Champollion announced publicly, but I don't have sources that specifically say so. A. Parrot (talk) 14:20, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Saint-Martin too describes the visit to see the Caylus vase as "a little time after Champollion published his essay on Egyptian phonetical hieroglyphs" [1]. Champollion's essay (letter) having been published on 27 September 1822, and Saint-Martin's account having been published in February 1823, they probably went to see the vase in October-December 1822. From the sources I have seen, Xerxes was indeed the first foreign non-Greco-Roman name Champollion encountered: "until now I have discovered only one Persian name, that of Xerxes" (and he goes on describing the Caylus vase) p.231, written in 1824. He seems to have been quite excited by the discovery as it proved not only the antiquity of phonetical hieroglyphs, but also resolved many uncertainties regarding Egyptian chronology [2]. Best regards पाटलिपुत्र Pat (talk) 15:30, 26 May 2020 (UTC)