https://youtu.be/5NeccdDpO5I https://youtu.be/5NeccdDpO5I I found this to be a great source on the topic. Your question is a great one, and hints as to why Jea

https://youtu.be/5NeccdDpO5I https://youtu.be/5NeccdDpO5I I found this to be a great source on the topic. Your question is a great one, and hints as to why Jean-Francois Champollion is hailed as the genius he was. The key insight was essentially the theory that the Coptic language spoken still as the liturgical language of Coptic Christians in Egypt was a modern form of the ancient Egyptian language encoded by Hieroglyphics. Champollion made a key insight attempting to decipher a cartouche (the hieroglyphic form used to write a name) that a symbol at the beginning of a name looked extremely similar to a sun. The Coptic word for sun was Ra. At the time, they’d already identified the symbol used to writes a ‘ss’ sound, and so Champollion was able to guess at the middle symbols spelling Mes, leading to the deciphering of Rameses. Note that the European world at large obviously already knew the name Rameses, which was key here. I believe in general names were key to deciphering many of the sounds used in the language, coupled with pronunciations hinted at by Coptic. I typed this all by memory so I may be off in some details but I believe I have the gist right.