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Lesley Adkins - Keys of Egypt - 9780006531456 - KSS0001230
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Keys of Egypt

€ 4.99
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Description for Keys of Egypt Paperback. Good clean copy with minor shelf wear

A vivid and superbly written account of the unravelling of one of the great intellectual puzzles, set against the backdop of Europe in the Napoleonic era.

When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, his troops were astonished to discover ancient temples, tombs and statues, all covered with hieroglyphs – the last remnants of an unreadable script and a language lost in time. On their return Egyptomania spread rapidly and the quest to decipher hieroglyphs began in earnest.

Jean-Francois Champollion was obsessed ... Read more

Failure threatened, as he was only one of many attempting to read the hieroglyphs, and his main rival, the English Thomas Young, claimed that decipherment was imminent, but Champollion refused to be distracted and finally, in 1822, he made the decisive breakthrough: he was the first person able to read the ancient Egyptian language in well over a thousand years.

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Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2001
Publisher
HarperCollins
Condition
Used, Very Good
Number of Pages
352
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9780006531456
SKU
KSS0001230
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days
Ref
99-1

About Lesley Adkins
Husband-and-wife Lesley and Roy Adkins are both archaeologists and Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London. They have written many books on archaeological subjects and have just completed The Little Book of Egyptian Hieroglyphs. They also run a colour picture library specialising in archaeology and history. Lesley and Roy recently moved to Devon, where they are embarking on the ... Read more

Reviews for Keys of Egypt
‘A fascinating and elegantly written biography of Champollion, doing justice to one of the great stories of academic heroism.’ Simon Singh, Sunday Telegraph ‘A fascinating account of the race to unlock the cryptic language of the pharaohs’ Giles Milton, Daily Mail

Goodreads reviews for Keys of Egypt


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