Champollion's Law

Champollion’s Law states that the key to understanding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs was recognizing that these symbols functioned both as pictures and as representations of sounds and ideas. When Jean-François Champollion deciphered the Rosetta Stone in the 19th century, he realized that hieroglyphs used a combination of phonetic symbols (representing sounds) and ideograms (representing ideas). This insight allowed linguists to decode the writing system, transforming hieroglyphics from an undeciphered mystery into a practical language. Essentially, the law emphasizes that effective understanding of complex symbols relies on identifying their dual role as images and sounds.