At 76, the author of Champollion the Egyptian has cultivated enough familiarity with the civilization of the pharaohs to think in its language. He cites as a turning point his 13th birthday, in 1961, when he devoured the first volume of a History of the Civilization of Ancient Egypt by the Belgian Jacques Pirenne.
He was the grandson, on his mother's side, of a Pole who emigrated to France just before the Second World War, who exercised a similar profession: public writer. Christian Jacq is also behind an exceptionally long series of detective novels.