The Centre hosts the following lecture: Prof. Jean-Luc Fournet (Collège de France): ‘The End of a Script and the Beginning of a Myth: Hieroglyphs and the Greeks’.

The lecture will be chaired by Amin Benaissa (Christ Church).

Please register at this link (whether you are planning to attend in person or online): https://forms.gle/dLarnLdUU5HZ1fgH9

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.