Pierre francois bouchard biography

French engineer, archeologist and discoverer of Rosetta stone. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Orgelet , France. Givet , France. Life [ edit ]. Early life [ edit ]. Egypt [ edit ]. Saint Domingue and Spain [ edit ].

Restoration [ edit ]. Bibliography [ edit ]. External links [ edit ]. Authority control databases. Bouchard, who arrived in Rosetta in May, was tasked with improvement works designed to enable this little Saracen fort to withstand a siege by a modern army. Dhautpoul entrusted Bouchard with the day-to-day works and informed General Menou that Fort Julien would soon be ready.

Bouchard was hard at work on the walls and ditches when, shortly after Bastille Day, the pickaxe of one of his men hit a large, and very hard, slab of dark rock which lay concealed amongst the sand-coloured stone. Bouchard halted the work and had his men extract this curious block of black granodiorite, a fine-grained black granite-like rock, so that, on 19 July , he could inform his superiors that he had unearthed a fascinating relic.

General Menou immediately had the 54 lines of Greek translated whilst the meaning of the other two blocks of text would remain a mystery for some time. The translation was soon ready, although the Ptolemy in the text was misidentified, and Michel Ange Lancret then sent a note to Cairo informing the scholars of the Institute of Egypt that this important and interesting artefact had been discovered.

The institute agreed that the Rosetta stone should be brought to Cairo for closer examination, and Bouchard was ordered to oversee its transport. It reached Boulaq in the middle of August and was already causing quite a stir in the capital. During the works that Major Dhautpoul of the enginners was carrying out at the ancient fort of Rachid, now known as Fort Julien, on the left bank of the Nile and some six kilometres from the town of Rosetta a black granite stone of a fine grain and very hard, was found at the site.

It is 36 inches high, 28 inches across and nine or 10 inches thick. One of the sides is polished and bears three inscriptions divided by parallel lines. The first text is superb and written in hieroglyphs, there being 14 lines of them although parts are missing as the stone has been broken. The second and middle text is in a script believed to be Syriac and there are 32 lines.

The third and last is written in Greek and there are 54 lines of text in fine characters and nicely carved and which is, as with the other two, rather well preserved. General Menou had part of the Greek text translated. In essence it relates to Ptolemy Philopator opening canals , a project involving immense effort, a large number of workers, vast sums and eight years to complete.

The stone will be of considerable interest for those studying hieroglyphs and may even be the key to unlocking their mystery. Citizen Bouchard, an officer of the engineers serving under major Dhautpoul, was directing the works at Rachid and has been directed to bring the stone to Cairo. At present it is at Boulaq. Alexandria: They inform us that since the departure of General Bonaparte the winds have been favourable and blow towards Europe.

The stone was subjected to a thorough and careful examination after being transported from Boulaq to the capital. Released then promoted to captain on May 1, , he was assigned a second time to Rosette and taken prisoner again during the capitulation of Fort Julien, defended by a handful of able-bodied soldiers against the attack of two thousand English combined with that of four thousand Turks.

It would unfortunately take too long in this enumeration of facts to place them precisely in the litany of the vicissitudes of the Egyptian campaign. Returning to Marseilles on July 30, , Bouchard, having kept a taste for adventure, was admitted to take part in the "Colonies" expedition to Saint-Domingue, pearl of the French West Indies, where the revolution was rumbling.

Embarked in December, he is therefore involved in an operation consisting in reframing the action of the black general, Dominique Toussaint dit Toussaint Louverture , who at the head of the black population of Haiti has made himself master of the island and governs in name of the French Republic. Doubtless Bouchard believed in a military parade.

His wife accompanies him, imitating him in this, but at his expense, Pauline Bonaparte, wife of General Leclerc, commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force. Adding to the difficulties due to the guerrillas and the devastating action of yellow fever, France decided to reestablish slavery abolished by the new masters of the colony. The campaign was appalling.

Of the thirty-five thousand men of the LECLERC expedition, twenty-one thousand died of disease, seven thousand were killed in the fighting.

Pierre francois bouchard biography

Moreover, the breaking of the Peace of Amiens in May gave the English the excuse of blockading the island. France is reduced to capitulation. Interned in Jamaica, he was released on parole in August and returned to France. He is in charge of construction work in this city, created from scratch by the Emperor to restore civil and military authority over a population for which the presence of English frigates at sea still aroused some nostalgia.

He stays there for two years with his wife, who will give birth to a son before the builder gives way again to the soldier. On either July 15 or July 19, , he found part of an ancient Greek stele built into a wall. It had three inscriptions carved into its dark grey granite-like surface: one at the bottom in Greek, a second in the middle in Demotic, and at the top, broken off, a third in hieroglyphics.

Bouchard's discovery is now called the Rosetta Stone first image. It was one of the great archaeological finds of the Napoleonic expedition, and to Bouchard's credit, he immediately recognized that if the three inscriptions recorded the same text, then it could potentially provide a key for the decipherment of hieroglyphic writing. The stone was taken back to Cairo, and the inscriptions were carefully copied by the members of the Institute, primarily by taking prints directly from the stone, and also by making casts of the inscriptions.

It was a good thing that copies and casts were taken, because when the French surrendered to the British in , the Rosetta Stone, and many other antiquities, were surrendered as well.