Champollion statue at Collège de France : what did Bartholdi mean ?

The statue of Jean-François Champollion by Auguste Bartholdi that welcomes the public at the Collège de France regularly raises questions. Often the subject of hasty interpretations and unfounded attacks in a context of statue debunking, is the gesture of the hieroglyphic decipherer, his foot resting on the head of a sphinx, really shocking ? If this question is understandable today, Bartholdi's archives shed light on what he wanted to express, and above all on how the statue was perceived at the time of its conception, by Egyptians and French alike : an evocation of the Oedipus myth, far from the expression of colonial domination.