Champollion letter on hieroglyphics. Title page of the 1822 booklet published by French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832). The full title translates as 'Letter to M. Dacier concerning the alphabet of the phonetic hieroglyphs'. It was sent to the secretary of the French 'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres'. Champollion described the key breakthrough that enabled him to decipher the hieroglyphics used in Ancient Egypt. Discovered by Napoleon's army in 1799 in Rashid (Rosetta) in Egypt, the Rosetta Stone's three parallel languages (everyday script, Greek, and hieroglyphics) allowed researchers to decode hieroglyphics.