Egypt: Rediscovering a Lost World - Episode five: The Mystery of the Rosetta Stone

The young Champollion, encouraged to develop his gift for languages by his elder brother, becomes obsessed with deciphering hieroglyphs as a means to telling the age of the world and revenging France against the British who had confiscated the stone in 1801. When Alexander the Great had conquered Egypt, he had fuelled local resentment by bringing in a Greek speaking elite to rule. Their descendant King Tutankhamun had commissioned a series of stones written in Greek, common Egyptian and hieroglyphs for temples across the land to extol his virtues and underline his claim to the throne.

Champollion studies under Silvestre de Sacy in Paris but finds the professor who had himself failed decipher hieroglyphs dismissive of further attempts believing them to be symbolic rather than a true language. English scientist Thomas Young uses mathematics to decipher the inscription like a code whilst Champollion believing hieroglyphs to be representative of a spoken language attempts to relate them to the Coptic language of Egypt's ancient Christian communities. Young makes a number of breakthroughs including the spelling of Ptolemy in hieroglyphs while Champollion finds work as assistant professor at the University of Grenoble. France is thrown into political turmoil in 1815 following defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and the republican Champollion is arrested for sedition and exiled to Figeac until 1821. Eccentric Egyptologist Giovanni Belzoni discovers an obelisk inscribed with the name of Cleopatra in Greek and hieroglyphs at Philae and sends it back to Young in England.

Young makes a mistake in translating the obelisk setting back his work whilst Champollion using a copy of the obelisk creates a hieroglyphic alphabet that he uses along with Coptic to translate the name of Ramesses the Great from sketches of Abu Simbal. Champollion's discovery arouses the suspicions of the Catholic Church who fear hieroglyphs might disprove the historical accuracy of the Bible. Young wishes Champllion good luck in proving his theories but Sacy and the Church are determined to stop him.