portion of the Antiquities (1809-1818) 197, the monuments it contained, and the learned commentaries by which they were accompanied, were what once more aroused the general attention of the European public to Egyptian research, which had been previously all but abandoned. This collection comprised not only the most important monuments of Egypt, but also the great funereal papyrus, and other Egyptian records of the highest value, and in a singularly correct form, considering the then existing state of our knowledge of either the signs or characters. But the riddle of the sphinx still remained unsolved. The monuments were still so mute to the French Egyptologers, that they often classed those of the lowest period as the most ancient, the earliest as the latest-respectively. Their hieroglyphical studies, in spite of a methodical arrangement of the characters, barely reached the point to which Zoega had arrived in the preceding century; and now that the papyri were authentically before the world, all hope of their decipherment appeared to have vanished. It was not that work, therefore, but the Rosetta stone, which in reality unloosed the tongue of both monuments and records, and rendered them accessible to historical investigation. This stone was the mighty lever by means of which not only the treasures of that work were to be made available for art and history, but which, by the light it shed on the mysteries of the Egyptian language and writing, was to enable science to penetrate through the darkness of thousands of years, extend the limits of history, and even open up a possibility of unfolding the primeval secrets of the human race. Let this then be a lesson, never to despair of the result of any grand conception,

197 The details are as follow: - Antiquités, 1809-1818. Etat Moderne, 1809-1822. Histoire Naturelle, 1809-1826. Carte Topographique, 1828. New edition, 1828—1831, in 12 vols., containing the plates, with 24 vols. 8vo of text.

of the success of any noble undertaking; but, above all, never to contemn or overlook even the most seemingly trivial and unpromising object within the range of primitive monumental history.

II. THE FIRST STEP.

THE ROYAL NAMES, AND THE ENCHORIAL ALPHABET.-SYLVESTRE DE SACY, AKERBLAD.

THE history of Egyptian hieroglyphical discovery has led to many disputes and much bitterness, which has afforded the intellectual conceit of the day a convenient cloak for its own inactivity, and the educated world an excuse for its own ignorance. History must consign to oblivion whatever is merely accidental or personal, however indispensable the knowledge of it may be to the historian himself. The real history of a great discovery, however, is scarcely less instructive than the discovery itself and for this reason, because the discovery depends essentially upon the method which the penetrating genius of the discoverer selects in fond anticipation. of his object. The grand point in every discovery is the mental determination to undertake the solution of a problem from a correct survey of the nature and laws of the object to be investigated. The proposal of such a question is often equivalent to its answer, and yet no one ever succeeded in discovering that answer by pursuing the beaten path.198

Zoega the Dane, in his very learned book on the

198 The most complete account of the progress of hieroglyphical discovery is to be found in Schwartze's work, already quoted in one of the foregoing sections, and to which we here once for all direct attention. This work is the first in which a complete set of hieroglyphic types has been employed; a grand undertaking, carried out under the author's own superintendence, by Mr. Ambrose Barth, who, in promoting the advancement of every thing connected with science, has deserved so well of his German fatherland, and one which does the highest credit to the German book trade, and the industry of German artists. On the whole, the hieroglyphics convey their Egyptian character very accurately; but in this respect Champollion's Grammar is the most perfect model.

obelisks, had, immediately previous to the Egyptian expedition (1798), undertaken an analysis of the Egyptian language and writing from a twofold point of view: as illustrated on the one hand by the tradition of the Greeks -on the other by the Coptic dialect- and with some success in each case. His Coptic researches afterwards brought to light, for the first time in 1810, a rich collection of Egyptian MSS. of the first centuries of Christianity. He was the first who in the work above cited, completely established the distinction between the hieroglyphics and the purely symbolical representations, engraven like them, and so frequently confounded with them. He perceived likewise that their number was limited, and even defined it with great exactitude. He confidently maintained that they contained signs of articulate sounds, in spite of the determined prejudice existing in favour of their exclusively symbolical and mythical import, and for these he invented the name of phonetic signs.199 Barthelemy had already suspected that the numerous Rings on the monuments contained the names of Kings. Zoega considered this a very plausible conjecture. Who would not have supposed that starting with such lucid views, either he himself or his successors, the editors of the French work (who, however, seem not to have known of his existence), must have discovered the truth on which they pressed so closely?

As engraved copies of the Rosetta stone became common in Europe for which object the English scholars had provided without delay-its decipherment appeared to philologers a problem capable of being solved. Heyne and Porson, by restoring and interpreting the Greek inscription, facilitated the task. Strange to say, those who first directed their attention to the two Egyptian texts started upon the utterly groundless assumption, repudiated by Zoega, that the sacred or

199 De Obeliscis, p. 439. Comp. p. 454. and 522. seqq.

hieroglyphic character was purely symbolic. To this assumption they superadded another equally baseless — of the purely alphabetical nature of the enchorial text. The consequence was, that all immediately concluded the language in both inscriptions to be the same, but written in two different ways. This was the third error. Hence many of them adopted the equally arbitrary notion of an identity between the enchorial character of the monuments and the hieratic, as exhibited in several of the old papyri, principally those representing funeral processions and trials of the dead. This was the fourth error.

Setting out with such conjectures, they could at best succeed in gaining but a very incomplete knowledge of the enchorial character, that, namely, appropriated to the popular or vulgar dialect. This dialect, as we can now prove, was the Coptic, as yet free from admixture of Greek words, and is found in documents of the time. of the Psammetici. It is distinguished from the sacred language not only in the individual words, but also in many forms of declension. The sacred language, on the other hand, is the language of science, and of literaAs being the language of the monuments, it is the only record of contemporary history, as well as the only witness of the primeval, historically undefined existence of the nation. Nothing, therefore, of real historical importance could be elicited by pursuing such

ture.

a course.

All hopes of success, however, either in deciphering enchorial inscriptions, or in the interpretation of the language in which they were written, necessarily depended upon the method of investigation. And here two courses presented themselves. The simple or preliminary course would be that usually resorted to in the interpretation of secret writing. The first object in such cases is to ascertain the number of the signs, the next to distinguish recurring groups, the third and last

to explain them by the language they are supposed to embody, according to the assumed or ascertained sense of the inscription. But the sense was here in substance at least ascertained. The presumption that the language was the Coptic or some kindred dialect of the Egyptian, was too natural not to be at once adopted and followed up by all competent inquirers. The other is the strictly philological method, that of investigating the value of the individual signs, and by means of them restoring the words and grammatical forms. It was the first of these two paths which was pursued by the successful decipherer of the inscriptions of the Sassanidæ, we mean Sylvestre de Sacy, that great man who brought Arabic philology, neglected since the time of Reiske, to its true historical position, and whose name we cannot mention without, in common with many of our countrymen, offering our tribute of veneration and gratitude to his memory, both as an instructor and as a man. This great scholar saw clearly that the only certain basis of interpretation must be to identify the proper names which occur, and for the most part several times, in the inscription. In the year 1802, in a letter to Chaptal, the Minister of the Republic, himself a distinguished cultivator both of philological and historical science, he pointed out the three groups which contain the names of Ptolemy, Berenice, and Alexander.

The acute Swedish philologer, Akerblad, succeeded, however, in advancing considerably further. His letter addressed to De Sacy in the course of the same year shows that those groups are capable of being decomposed into letters. By means of them and thirteen other groups, among which are the Coptic words Chemi, Egypt, Phuro, the King, Nierpheui, the Temples, Ueb, Priests, he formed an alphabet for almost all the letters of the enchorial character. He did not agree with De Sacy in considering this character as the