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Jean-Francois Champollion was known as the father of Egyptology for his deciphering of Egyptian Hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone as a language key. It took him three years. His research helped explain that the language of the Egyptians were both phonetic and ideographic signs.
He showed a keen interest in linguistics while very young. At 16 years of age, he had mastery over twelve different languages – one of which was Coptic, which later helped him interpret the Rosetta stone.