First-ever English publication of the Egyptian diaries of the man who, against the odds, broke the code of the hieroglyphs. Seen as mystical codes, Egyptian hieroglyphs were the subject of a hard-fought race between the French and the English in the 1820s. Outflanking opponents, Champollion emerged as the man who solved their complicated code through his driven genius. In this lively account of brilliance and perseverance, he succeeds against the odds to reach Egypt in 1828 during a brief lull in the Turkish wars in the Mediterranean. A unique and passionate tale, his adventure was troubled by heat, flooding, robbers and deceitful dealers; yet he also uncovers evidence regarding the age of the world, then thought to be no more than 4000 years. These dispatches of his progress to his brother, a journalist, were impatiently read in Europe at the time, but have never been published in Britain.