Johan David Åkerblad

Johan David Åkerblad (6 May 1763, Stockholm – 7 February 1819, Rome) was a Swedish diplomat and orientalist.

He could also read words like "Greek", "temple" and "Egyptian" and found out the correct sound value from 14 of the 29 signs, but he wrongly believed the demotic hieroglyphs to be entirely alphabetic.

[1] One of his strategies of comparing the demotic to Coptic later became a key in Champollion's eventual decipherment of the hieroglyphic script and the Ancient Egyptian language.

[1] In 1810, Åkerblad sent to Sacy for publication his work entitled MÉMOIRE: Sur les noms coptes de quelques villes et villages d'Égypte.

[7] His last days were spent in Rome where he was supported by Elizabeth Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire, and others who admired his talents.

"Illustration depicting two columns of demotic text and their Greek equivalent, as devised by Johan David Åkerblad in 1802"
Johan Åkerblad's table of Demotic phonetic characters and their Coptic equivalents (1802)