Recognizing Champollion's Breakthrough As time passed, Champollion became more and more frustrated. Then one day a colleague sent him a copy of an inscription that had been found in the ruins of a temple on the Nile River island of Philae. Written in both hieroglyphs and Greek, the inscription was a royal decree issued by Pharaoh Ptolemy VII and his Queen, Cleopatra II. (This was not the famous Cleopatra, but an earlier one.)
The Greek forms of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, like the English, had several letters in common. However, Champollion corrected Thomas Young’s mistake and spelled the first name as “Ptolmis.” He also knew that Cleopatra began with a “K” in Greek rather than a “C.” Now it was up to the French scholar to show whether or not there was a duplication of hieroglyphs in the Egyptian version of the names. He lined up the two groups of symbols and made a comparison.
—The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone,
James Cross Giblin
Based on the passage, how was Champollion able to translate more hieroglyphs than other scholars? Write a few sentences explaining your answer.