Page "Rosetta Stone" Paragraph 48

Even before the Salvolini affair, disputes over precedence and plagiarism punctuated the decipherment story.

Thomas Young's work is acknowledged in Champollion's 1822 Lettre à M. Dacier, but incompletely, according to British critics: for example, James Browne, a sub-editor on the Encyclopædia Britannica ( which had published Young's 1819 article ), contributed anonymously a series of review articles to the Edinburgh Review in 1823, praising Young's work highly and alleging that the " unscrupulous " Champollion plagiarised it.

These articles were translated into French by Julius Klaproth and published in book form in 1827.

Young's own 1823 publication reasserted the contribution that he had made.

The early deaths of Young and Champollion, in 1829 and 1832, did not put an end to these disputes ; the authoritative work on the stone by the British Museum curator E. A. Wallis Budge, published in 1904, gives special emphasis to Young's contribution by contrast with Champollion's.

In the early 1970s, French visitors complained that the portrait of Champollion was smaller than one of Young on an adjacent information panel ; English visitors complained that the opposite was true.

Both portraits were in fact the same size.