The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt by John Ray (Harvard) - reviewed by Jonathon Keats. This is actually less of a review than a short summary of the book's main focal points. It provides very little in the way of opinion about how good the book actually is.
The British and the French both played crucial roles, and many have read the decipherment as a continuation of their political rivalry. Ray acknowledges this, yet wisely concentrates his attention on the personal ambitions of Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion, the two men who did the actual scholarship. Young was the first to work on the stone. He was not a likely candidate. Egypt didn't interest him especially, at least not as much as biology and physics, fields to which he routinely contributed major discoveries.
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