Jean-Luc Fournet – External lectures

Statutory Education in France and Abroad

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2026–2027

United States

University of Chicago*

During the week of May 17, 2027, a 2-hour course on a topic to be determined.

*As part of an agreement signed with the Collège de France.

Switzerland

University of Geneva

In May 2027, a course (2 hours) titled: Writing a Document in Late Antiquity: The Case of the Letter.

2025–2026

Belgium

Free University of Brussels

May 5, 2026, 2:00 p.m., a lecture (2 hours) on: A New Papyrus from the Theban Magic Library.

Italy

Pisa Normal School

May 20, 2026, 10:00 a.m., a one-hour lecture on: Aristophanes and Menander in Late Antiquity.

University of Pisa

May 19, 2026, 5:00 p.m., two lectures (2 hours) on: An Unpublished Orphic Papyrus.

Download the course poster for Pisa, Italy

pdf (4.27 MB)

2024–2025

Italy

University of Pisa

On May 6, 2025, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., a lecture on: A New Theban Poetic Papyrus.

Address: Sala Riunioni, Palazzo Venera, Via Santa Maria 36

University of Salerno

On May 8, 2025, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., a lecture on: Two epics on papyrus (P. Berol. 9799+21154 and P.Flor. II 114): between Thebes and Arsinoe

Address: Fisciano Campus, DIPSUM Conference Room (Building D3, 3rd floor)

2023–2024

Italy

French School of Rome

In May and June 2024, four courses (4 hours) on: The Greeks and Hieroglyphs. The Demise of a Writing System and the Birth of a Myth

Egyptian hieroglyphs are more than just a writing system used continuously by the Egyptians until the 4^th century CE: far beyond the borders of the Nile Valley and long after the end of Pharaonic civilization, they have sparked fascination, questions, and fantasies. Originally a writing system intended for communication, they gradually took on the trappings of myth to become the paradigm of a script designed to conceal unspeakable secrets. It was not until Champollion that this myth was shattered—though this did not put an end to the spell that Egypt and its mysteries still cast over us.

One work alone embodies the history of these Mediterranean wanderings and will serve as our guiding thread on a journey that will take us from the banks of the Nile to those of the Tiber, via Constantinople: the Treatise on Hieroglyphs by the Greek philosopher Horapollo is believed to have been written in Egypt at the very moment when hieroglyphs were disappearing, and it bears witness to the Greeks’ fascination with this ancient script. Rediscovered on an island in the Cyclades in 1419, it was brought back to Italy, where it fueled a veritable “hieroglyphophilia,” with Rome—thanks to its Egyptian monuments—serving as its epicenter for a long time. But isn’t this work—the only one from Greco-Roman antiquity that has been handed down to us on hieroglyphs—itself a myth that needs to be deconstructed?

The End of Hieroglyphic Culture Tuesday, May 21, 2024: French Embassy in Italy / Institut français Italia , Palazzo Farnese, Salon d’Hercule (Piazza Farnese 67)
The Greeks and Hieroglyphs: Between Fascination and Misconception
Monday, May 27, 2024: French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici (Viale della Trinità dei Monti, 1)
Horapollon: Author of a Greek Treatise on Hieroglyphs?
Monday, June 3, 2024: Fondazione Primoli (Via Giuseppe Zanardelli, 1)
The Pitfalls of Decryption: Deconstructing the Myth
Monday, June 10, 2024: Museo Nazionale Romano , Palazzo Altemps (Via di S. Apollinare, 8)

Abstracts

1. The End of Hieroglyphic Writing

The end of a writing system is a phenomenon that is as moving as it is intellectually enlightening. Invented shortly before 3100 B.C., hieroglyphs and the scripts derived from them (hieratic and demotic) had to adapt to the new linguistic order that emerged with Alexander’s conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C.: Greek became the language of the new state, relegating the Egyptian language and its scripts to a secondary role—a situation that was further exacerbated by the Romans when they made Egypt a province of their Empire in 30 B.C. We will trace, step by step, the gradual decline of hieroglyphic scripts until their extinction in the year 394 (for hieroglyphs) and 452 (for Demotic), seeking to identify the factors that led to their decline and their replacement by Coptic script, which would henceforth be used to write Egyptian for many centuries. Behind this shift in writing systems lay a cultural and religious revolution triggered by Christianity.

2. The Greeks and Hieroglyphs: Between Fascination and Misconception

The myth of hieroglyphs, as it developed in modern Europe, has its origins in the Greeks’ view of Egyptian writing systems. Having been captivated by Egyptophilia since at least the time of Herodotus (5^th century B.C.), the Greeks, once settled in Egypt, took a keen interest in Egyptian culture and its forms of graphic expression. But they did so more as philosophers—intrigued by the otherness of this ideographic writing system and speculating on its intellectual implications—than as philologists eager to understand how it functioned. Witnessing—both as observers and participants—the decline and disappearance of the ancient Egyptian scripts, they left behind numerous written accounts of their curiosity about hieroglyphs, which spread throughout the rest of the Greco-Roman world and, when rediscovered during the Renaissance, left a lasting mark on modern conceptions of ancient Egyptian writing. Together with the Greeks, we will delve into the making of the hieroglyphic myth.

3. Horapollon: Author of a Greek Treatise on Hieroglyphs?

The only Greek work entirely devoted to hieroglyphs to have survived the decline of Greek literature is Horapollo’s treatise titled Hieroglyphica, whose manuscript was rediscovered by an Italian priest on the island of Andros in 1419 and deposited in Florence in 1422. This work could have changed the history of hieroglyphic decipherment by anticipating it by four centuries: Horapollon was, in fact, an Alexandrian intellectual who belonged to a pagan family interested in the culture and religion of the ancient Egyptians and was therefore well-positioned to convey precise, firsthand information about hieroglyphs in his writings. However, the reality was quite different: his treatise, although it described approximately 200 hieroglyphs and provided their meanings, had no impact in antiquity, and despite its influence beginning in the Renaissance, it only misled modern scholars seeking the key to hieroglyphs. While the work reflects all the Greeks’ preconceptions about hieroglyphs, it also raises numerous questions about the date and context of its composition, casting doubt on the assumptions we once held about this treatise. What if these Hieroglyphica still remain to be deciphered?

4. The Trials of Decipherment: Deconstructing the Myth

Between the rediscovery of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica and Jean-François Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs beginning in 1822, hieroglyphic studies stagnated, even though Egypt never ceased to interest scholars or draw their attention to its writing system. This stagnation cannot be explained solely by the absence of a Rosetta Stone (which would not appear until 1799), but is also due to Greek prejudices that modern Europe inherited with the enthusiastic revival of classical literature during the Renaissance. After hastening the disappearance of hieroglyphs in the final centuries of their history, the ancient Greeks unwittingly contributed to delaying their decipherment by bequeathing to modernity the fantasies they had developed about this writing system, which acted as epistemological obstacles. The rediscovery of Neoplatonic works, which coincided with that of Horapollo, only further derailed the efforts of the “antiquarians” (of whom Athanasius Kircher is the best-known representative) to restore meaning to hieroglyphic inscriptions. The historical-philological sciences, which were to triumph in the nineteenth century, were in a sense built upon the deconstruction of the hieroglyphic myth.

Listen to the lectures on the website of the French School in Rome

2022–2023

Belgium

Free University of Brussels

On May 15, 2023, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., a lecture on: Homerism in Late Antiquity.

Italy

University of Pisa

On May 24, 2023, from 5:45 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., a lecture on: Classical Culture at the White Monastery (Egypt).

2020–2021

Belgium

Free University of Brussels

In December 2020 or April 2021, two courses on: Homerism in the written culture of Late Antiquity.

Visit the Free University of Brussels website

Switzerland

University of Geneva

In May 2021, two courses on: Words and Forms: Content and Layout of Byzantine Papyrological Documents.

Visit the University of Geneva website

2019–2020

Belgium

Free University of Brussels

In December 2019 or April 2020, two courses on: Homerism in the written culture of Late Antiquity.

Visit the Free University of Brussels website

Switzerland

University of Geneva

In May 2021, two courses on: Words and Forms: Content and Layout of Byzantine Papyrological Documents.

Visit the University of Geneva website

2018–2019

Belgium

Free University of Brussels. Department of Languages and Literature

Thursday, May 9, 2019, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., two lectures on: Latin in Byzantine Egypt.

Visit the Free University of Brussels website

United Kingdom

French House in Oxford

On June 5, 2019, a lecture on: Homer and Late Antique Poetry in the Light of New Poems by Dioscorus of Aphrodite (Egypt, AD VI).

Visit the Maison Française d’Oxford website

2017–2018

Italy

Girolamo Vitelli Papyrological Institute (Florence)

On Tuesdays, May 8, 15, 22, and 29, 2018, at 11:00 a.m., four lectures on: “The Document: A New Perspective on the Written Culture of Late Antiquity”:

May 8, 2018: Formal Changes in the Document at the End of Antiquity;
May 15, 2018: The Christianization of Writing;
May 22, 2018: The “Literarization” of the Document;
May 29, 2018: The “Documentarization” of Literature.

United States

Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (New York)

On March 22 and 29, and April 5 and 12, 2017, four courses on: “Egyptian versus Greek in Late Antique Egypt: The Struggle of Coptic for Official Status.”

Visit the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World's website

Chair

Jean-Luc Fournet

Written Culture in Late Antiquity and Byzantine Papyrology

2015 - today