Sunday, September 27, 2020

September 27th in stamps Champollion announces that he has deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Edgar Degas, Constantine I of Greece abdicates

 Here are some events that happened on September 27th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day


1822 – Jean-François Champollion announces that he has deciphered the Rosetta Stone.

Jean-François Champollion, also known as Champollion le jeune ('the Younger') (23 December 1790 – 4 March 1832), was a French scholar, philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology. A child prodigy in philology, he gave his first public paper on the decipherment of Demotic in 1806, and already as a young man held many posts of honor in scientific circles, and spoke Coptic and Arabic fluently. During the early 19th-century, French culture experienced a period of 'Egyptomania', brought on by Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt during his campaign there (1798–1801) which also brought to light the trilingual Rosetta Stone. Scholars debated the age of Egyptian civilization and the function and nature of hieroglyphic script, which language if any it recorded, and the degree to which the signs were phonetic (representing speech sounds) or ideographic (recording semantic concepts directly). Many thought that the script was only used for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical ideas, and did not record historical information. The significance of Champollion's decipherment was that he showed these assumptions to be wrong, and made it possible to begin to retrieve many kinds of information recorded by the ancient Egyptians.

Champollion lived in a period of political turmoil in France which continuously threatened to disrupt his research in various ways. During the Napoleonic Wars, he was able to avoid conscription, but his Napoleonic allegiances meant that he was considered suspect by the subsequent Royalist regime. His own actions, sometimes brash and reckless, did not help his case. His relations with important political and scientific figures of the time, such as Joseph Fourier and Silvestre de Sacy helped him, although in some periods he lived exiled from the scientific community.

In 1820, Champollion embarked in earnest on the project of decipherment of hieroglyphic script, soon overshadowing the achievements of British polymath Thomas Young who had made the first advances in decipherment before 1819. In 1822, Champollion published his first breakthrough in the decipherment of the Rosetta hieroglyphs, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs – the first such script discovered. In 1824, he published a Précis in which he detailed a decipherment of the hieroglyphic script demonstrating the values of its phonetic and ideographic signs. In 1829, he traveled to Egypt where he was able to read many hieroglyphic texts that had never before been studied, and brought home a large body of new drawings of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Home again he was given a professorship in Egyptology, but only lectured a few times before his health, ruined by the hardships of the Egyptian journey, forced him to give up teaching. He died in Paris in 1832, 41 years old. His grammar of Ancient Egyptian was published posthumously.

During his life as well as long after his death intense discussions over the merits of his decipherment were carried out among Egyptologists. Some faulted him for not having given sufficient credit to the early discoveries of Young, accusing him of plagiarism, and others long disputed the accuracy of his decipherments. But subsequent findings and confirmations of his readings by scholars building on his results gradually led to general acceptance of his work. Although some still argue that he should have acknowledged the contributions of Young, his decipherment is now universally accepted, and has been the basis for all further developments in the field. Consequently, he is regarded as the "Founder and Father of Egyptology".

Stamps from Egypt, France, Monaco depicting Champollion or the Rosetta Stone

France Champollion



Egypt Champollion FDC


Egypt Champollion

Monaco Champollion


France Champollion Maxicard


1917 Died: Edgar Degas, French painter and sculptor (b. 1834)

Edgar Degas (born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, 19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers, racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation

Some stamps depicting Degas and or his artwork

Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator


Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator


Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator


Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator


1922 – King Constantine I of Greece abdicates his throne in favor of his eldest son, George II.

Constantine I (2 August 1868 – 11 January 1923) was King of Greece from 1913 to 1917 and from 1920 to 1922. He was commander-in-chief of the Hellenic Army during the unsuccessful Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and led the Greek forces during the successful Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, in which Greece expanded to include Thessaloniki, doubling in area and population. He succeeded to the throne of Greece on 18 March 1913, following his father's assassination.

His disagreement with Eleftherios Venizelos over whether Greece should enter World War I led to the National Schism. Constantine forced Venizelos to resign twice, but in 1917 he left Greece, after threats by the Entente forces to bombard Athens; his second son, Alexander, became king. After Alexander's death, Venizelos' defeat in the 1920 legislative elections, and a plebiscite in favor of his return, Constantine was reinstated. He abdicated the throne for the second and last time in 1922, when Greece lost the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, and was succeeded by his eldest son, George II. Constantine died in exile four months later, in Sicily. 

Greek stamps depicting Constantine  I

Greece: Constantine I Mourning stamps with black edges/perforations


Greece. Statue of King Constantine on Horse Year : 1938


George II (Greek: Γεώργιος Βʹ, Geórgios II; 19 July 1890 – 1 April 1947) reigned as King of Greece from 1922 to 1924 and from 1935 to 1947. He was a paternal first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.


Greek stamps depicting George II

Greece: George II  Mourning stamps with black edges/perforations



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