the foundation on which M. Champollion afterwards reared the whole superstructure of his phonetic alphabet. The new method of deciphering had been explained, and even exemplified, by the original discoverer; and it was therefore no difficult matter to extend its application, in proportion as fresh materials were accumulated. Facile inventis addere.

But long before this event, so important for Egyptian archæology, Champollion had occupied himself with the study of hieroglyphics, to which, even from the period of his quitting the Lyceum, he had applied with much ardour. He had read Jablonsky, Zoega, and all that the Description de l'Egypte contained on the subject; he had adopted the system then in vogue of explaining the mythology of Egypt exclusively by means of passages from the classic authors; he had applied to the hieroglyphic inscriptions vain theories, which could never lead to any positive result; he had examined and investigated all the monuments of this description to which he could obtain access; he had made numerous copies of inscriptions, and, as it were, engraved on his memory, all those to be found in public or private collections; and he had employed himself in reproducing them from recollection, a species of exercise in which he acquired wonderful dexterity. But all this labour he had expended to no purpose. Pendant de longues années, les 'inscriptions hieroglyphiques furent muettes pour lui comme 'pour les autres savans.' He pored over them without intermission; he tried a hundred different systems of interpretation; but the time had not yet arrived when the secret was to be revealed to him.

Meanwhile more accurate notions respecting the true nature of hieroglyphical writing had already begun to be entertained. Zoega, suspecting that several of the hieroglyphs might be employed as the signs of sounds, had, for that reason, denominated them phonetic. But the conjecture at first made no impression on those who were occupied with the study of the ancient Egyptian writings; and it was only after the discovery of the Rosetta inscription that the learned were led to reflect that this was the only method by which the ancient Egyptians could possibly have expressed either foreign or national proper names. In this inscription, everybody at once recognised the place occupied by the name of Ptolemy, when Dr Young, by a happy artifice of collocation, had pointed it out; and on other monuments the ovals or rings containing the names of Berenice and Arsinoë, as well as of some kings of the old Egyptian dynastics, were also indicated with tolerable certainty. At this period, the current or enchorial writings engaged the attention of Silvestre de Sacy

and Ackerblad in France, and of Dr Young in England; and very considerable progress was made, particularly by the latter, in determining the equivalents of groups, and even in ascertaining the values of individual characters. But during all this time, Champollion had done nothing. The first essays of these ingenious men, if known to him at all, seem to have made no impression whatever on his mind. He continued to labour in a direction totally different; and the idea that the hieroglyphs might contain a portion of characters purely alphabetical, had never suggested itself to his understanding. This is established beyond dispute, by a passage in his work, entitled De l'Ecriture Hiératique des anciens Egyptiens, published at Grenoble in 1821, only a year before the date of his Lettre à M. Dacier. In this production, after stating that 'long study, and an attentive comparison of the hieroglyphic texts with those of the second order, regarded as alphabetical, had conducted him 'to a contrary conclusion,' he proceeds to lay down the following general principles: first, that the writing of the Egyptian manuscripts of the second order is not alphabetical;-secondly, that this second system is only a simple modification of the hieroglyphic system, from which it differs merely in the form of the signs; -thirdly, that this second species of writing is the hieratic of the Greek authors, and may be regarded as a hieroglyphic tachygraphy; and, fourthly, that the hieratic characters, and, consequently, those also from which they are derived (namely, the hieroglyphic), are signs of THINGS, and not signs of SOUNDS, ('sont des signes de choses et non des signes de sons.') It follows from all this, that in 1821, when the work here referred to appeared,* M. Champollion did not believe the existence of

*In the preface to the French translation of our former articles on Hieroglyphics, the following curious particulars are mentioned respecting the work referred to in the text: Ce petit volume in-folio est ' devenu extrêmement rare; on dit que l'auteur a fait tout son possible pour en soustraire les exemplaires aux yeux du public, en retirant du commerce des mains de ses amis ceux qu'il avait d'abord répandus. La raison qu'on a mise en avant etait: "La crainte de blesser les scruples de quelques personnes pieuses." Mais il ne se trouve dans ce livre absolument rien qui ait trait à la haute antiquité de l'empire des Pharaons, et qui pour cette raison soit en contradiction 'ouverte avec les récits de la Bible. Il est permis de penser que le véritable motif qui a determiné M. Champollion à supprimer ce livre, a été, de ne pas donner une mésure trop précise des progrès qu'il avait 'faits jusqu'en 1821, un an avant sa Lettre à M. Dacier. Cette mésure existe dans l'assertion" que les signes hieroglyphiques sont des signes de CHOSES et non des signes de SONS." Certes, celui qui depuis dix

alphabetic signs among the hieroglyphs; although Dr Young had communicated his discovery to the learned of Europe, in the article EGYPT, published in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, in the year 1819; and although the conjecture of Zoega had been partially verified even by Silvestre de Sacy and Ackerblad.

At this period, however, Mr Bankes made known a Greek inscription which he had discovered upon an obelisk in the island of Philæ, and which mentioned the erection of a monument in honour of King Ptolemy. The discovery of the English traveller attracted the attention of scholars; and, in some very learned observations on the text of the inscription, M. Letronne stated it as his opinion, that the monument in question would be found to contain, in hieroglyphical characters, the same matter precisely as the Greek inscription; or, in other words, that the one would prove to be a version of the other. When this ingenious and important suggestion, which every thing, indeed, tended to confirm, came to the knowledge of Mr Bankes, that gentleman, anxious to afford all the means in his power of verifying its accuracy, transmitted to the Academy of Inscriptions,

" ans avait travaillé sur les hiéroglyphes sans les déchiffrer, et qui faisait, en 1821, imprimer un axiome pareil, avait grand besoin d'être guidé dans ses nouvelles researches de 1822 par les découvertes du docteur Young, publiées au mois de decembre 1819, dans le Supplement de l'Encyclopédie Britannique. On ne doit donc plus douter que les découvertes de M. Champollion ne soient entées sur celles du docteur Young, auquel appartient le mérite d'avoir le premier démontré qu'on s'est servi en Egypte de signes hieroglyphiques pour 'exprimer alphabétiquement les sons des noms propres.'-(Aperçu sur les Hieroglyphes d'Egypte, Pref. p. xi. Paris, 1827.) Latterly, we regret to say, M. Champollion, in various instances, showed himself greatly deficient in literary honesty. The translation of our first and fullest article on hieroglyphical literature, inserted in the Revue Britannique, which was then published at Paris, is generally attributed, we believe correctly, to his pen; and never certainly was any literary production more grossly maltreated in a translation. Many passages are wholly expunged, especially from the historical part of the article; others are altered, so as to suit the views of the translator, and attribute to us opinions diametrically at variance with those which we had actually expressed; and all the facts and dates tending to establish the priority of Dr Young's discovery are carefully cancelled. But by this unceremonious method of manipulation, the translator overshot his mark. The garbled translation was soon followed by the one above referred to, of the entire article; and the claims of Dr Young were thus brought fully and fairly before the literary public of France.

in the month of January, 1822, a lithographed copy of the hieroglyphics covering the four faces of the obelisk, upon the base of which he had discovered the Greek inscription already mentioned; and it was this copy which, having been communicated to M. Champollion, furnished him with the means of making the observations and comparisons, of which he published the results in his Lettre à M. Dacier, dated the 22d September, 1822. Then, indeed, it was, and not before, that he recognised the name of Cleopatra, and the employment of alphabetical characters in the hieroglyphs: then it was that he abandoned the notions which he had hitherto entertained as to the nature of the ancient Egyptian writings; notions which, as we have seen, had at first led him to reject, in the most distinct and formal manner, the discoveries of Dr Young. Nevertheless, at this period, he appears to have been of opinion, that the employment of alphabetical characters was confined to the transcription of Greek and Roman proper names, and that the greater part of the other hieroglyphics was symbolical or ideographic.

Having entered on this new career, M. Champollion devoted himself with more ardour than ever to the study of the Egyptian monuments. He applied the alphabet, of which Dr Young had furnished the basis, to deciphering the names of Roman emperors, and of Greek and Egyptian kings; and finding his observations extend to objects which had not been touched in his Lettre à M. Dacier, he, after modifying these in some points and verifying them in others, embodied the results in a more extensive work, which appeared in 1824, under the title of Précis du Système Hieroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens. But we must guard the reader against the misconception which this title is calculated to produce, respecting the extent and results of M. Champollion's labours. For, instead of an exposition of a general system,' and a summary of the principles by which the reading and interpretation of the hieroglyphic texts may be undertaken, as the above title would naturally lead us to expect, the work in reality contains only a more ample and extended application of the primary idea developed in the Lettre à M. Dacier. It embraces a great number of proper names belonging to persons of all ranks; and the reading of these is accompanied with observations and conjectures as to the value of certain concomitant signs, to which the author attributed a grammatical value, which, however, he failed to establish by a sufficient induction, or indeed by any adequate evidence. But this did not prevent him from proceeding at once to generalize; and, as he had formerly maintained that the greater part, if not the whole, of the hieroglyphic texts were ideographic or symbolical,

so now he passed over to the opposite extreme; having concluded that the alphabetic method of writing predominated in the monumental inscriptions, and that all these might, in a great measure, be interpreted by means of the phonetic method. If this principle had been sufficiently demonstrated, it would no doubt have proved of the very highest importance; but, unfortunately, on applying it to the Rosetta Inscription, of which the sense was known from the accompanying Greek version, the author himself was only able to interpret some detached phrases, which of themselves were by no means sufficient to establish the certainty of his system; whilst the body of the text remained as untractable and obscure as in the days of Kircher. It was evident, indeed, that the true key had not yet been discovered; and that much was still wanting, in order to enable the most expert Egyptian archæologist to decipher a single continuous line of any hieroglyphic inscription.

Of this Champollion himself appears to have at length become sensible; indeed, he could not but feel the necessity of augmenting the mass of materials, or texts, at his disposal, and of multiplying more and more the points of comparison indispensable to the progress of his studies. Accordingly, he undertook a journey to Italy, in order to examine the treasures contained in that classic land of archæology; and spent much time in the museum of Turin, then recently enriched by the fine collection of the Chevalier Drovetti, and containing a great number of papyri, pillars, and inscriptions of every kind. Here were written the Lettres addressed to the Duc de Blacas, in which the author began to make more numerous applications of his system, particularly to the ancient dynasties of Egypt; and even attempted more extensive interpretations, comprehending not merely simple proper names, but names preceded or followed by titles, or by certain portions of phrases. But these readings were in no instance accompanied by the necessary explanation, or developement of the process employed in deciphering the titles and legends; and, with reference to the Egyptian system of writing, the Lettres à M. de Blacas produced no change of any importance in the theory of the author. Accordingly, when, after his return from Italy, he published a second edition of his Précis du Système Hieroglyphique, he introduced but few modifications of the statements and assertions contained in the first; and saw no reason to alter the opinion which he had therein expressed as to the phonetic nature of the great mass of the hieroglyphs. On the contrary, he formally repeated his fundamental proposition, 'That the figurative and symbolical characters are employed in 'the Egyptian texts in a smaller proportion than the phonetic