'The End of a Script and the Beginning of a Myth: Hieroglyphs and the Greeks'

The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC)  is delighted to announce the Centre's Trinity Term Lecture. The lecture will be given by Jean-Luc Fournet (Collège de France) on Wednesday, 10 May, at 5.15 (UK time) at the Memorial Room of the Queen's College in the University of Oxford. 

Jean-Luc Fournet (Collège de France) : “The End of a Script and the Beginning of a Myth: Hieroglyphs and the Greeks”

Abstract: The Egyptian language coexisted with Greek from the time of the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great (332 BC). This cohabitation had a decisive impact on the use of Egyptian scripts (hieroglyphs and their cursive versions, hieratic and demotic) and led to their disappearance and replacement by Coptic, whose writing is almost purely Greek. At the same time as these scripts were declining, the Greeks developed conceptions about them which influenced the vision that modern Europe came to have of hieroglyphs until Champollion refuted it decisively. This lecture will outline the development of this myth. 

Jean-Luc Fournet is holder of the chair Culture écrite de l’Antiquité tardive et papyrologie byzantine at the Collège de France. 

All welcome.