[1] The first published reference was by Jean-François Champollion in June 1824,[2] after visiting the Museo Egizio in Turin shortly after it first opened, at which point Drovetti's collection comprised the entire contents of the museum.

Among other things, Aleph, Gimel, Waw, Heth, Qoph and Shin are similar to Hebrew in such a way that they are immediately recognized by everyone, even those ignorant of palaeography; while of the rest, Dalet, Yodh, Kaph and Resh differ from the vulgar script only by a slight bend… Meanwhile, from the similarity of the letters in these two inscriptions, it is clear that we have not without reason rejected the opinion of Kopp in the previous diatribe, referring this writing to the Arameans rather than to the Phoenicians.

That being the case, manifestly clear, these specimens of Egyptian writing, closely connected with the Hebrew square, would undermine the latter’s tradition of its Assyrian origin.

What remains to confirm this opinion cannot be answered except by the Carpentras stele, clearly dedicated to Osiris, but at any rate our inscription could have come from an Egyptian Jew, using Assyrian letters.

[7][2] In 1837, in his Scripturae Linguaeque Phoeniciae, which was to become "a historical milestone of Phoenician epigraphy",[8] Wilhelm Gesenius commented on the prior publications and concluded: The dialect is pure Chaldean, as in all these Egyptian monuments; but the author of the fragment, unless everything deceives me, is a worshiper of Jove, i.e. a Jew, in these verses, which seem to have been taken from a liturgical book, invoking God's help in his calamity or that of his people (as you understand עבדך).