CHAMPOLLION Jean-François Explication de la principale scène peinte des papyrus funéraires égyptiens.

Off-print of: Bulletin universel des sciences et de l’industrie,  November 1825.

Important study of the papyrus preserved in the Vatican under Pope Pius VII, published by Champollion the younger slightly after his first important hieroglyphic translations (in: Panthéon égyptien, published between 1823 and 1825).

The papyri of the Vatican are described at length in his Catalogue des papyrus égyptiens du Vatican, et notice plus étendue d’un de ces papyrus, avec un discours préliminaire, published the same year in Rome. The very detailed physical description of the papyrus is followed by an interpretation of the influence of Egyptian funeral rites on occidental religions. “Nous n’insisterons pas davantage sur de tels rapprochements, parce qu’il suffit de les avoir indiqués pour faire comprendre quels précieux renseignement sur les origines de la religion des Grecs et des Romains, peut fournir l’étude approfondie des monuments de tout genre qui nous restent de l’antique Égypte”.

“Under their [Pius VII and Leo XII] pontificates, the Vatican acquired a collection of Egyptian papyri from the Franciscan missionary Angelo da Pofi and from Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a circus strongman and turned adventurer who was the first European, in 1817, to enter the burial chamber of the pyramid of Chefren at Giza, and who, that same year, discovered the tomb of Seti I in the valley of the Kings. The care of the papyrus collection was entrusted to Angelo Mai (1782-1854), Prefect of the Vatican Library. Aware of Champollion’s theories, Mai invited him to Rome to work on the papyri when antagonism towards the Frenchman was strongest. Abbot Michelangelo Lanci condemned Champollion’s findings as false, since, in the abbot’s opinion, they contradicted the Bible” (The Vatican Collections: The Papacy and Art, p. 175).