demotic of Herodotus, but supposed it to be the same as the hieratic. Here then the first great step was made, ingeniously and successfully, towards deciphering the demotic alphabet; and although some of his conclusions were erroneous, and others incomplete, still his method was strictly critical. But little further progress, however, could, under the circumstances, be expected from any such course; for Akerblad had as little idea of the existence of symbolic signs in the enchorial, as he had of phonetic signs in the hieroglyphic character. To an Englishman belongs the immortal honour of both those discoveries, which he also followed out with equal acuteness and perseverance, and to a certain extent demonstrated. This was the second great step towards deciphering the hieroglyphics. III. FURTHER RESEARCHES INTO THE ENCHORIAL CHARACTER. DIS THOMAS YOUNG, a learned physician, who had already obtained a durable celebrity by his discoveries in mathematical and physical science, had also been led, especially after the year 1813, by the publication of the Mithridates of Adelung and Vater, of which he wrote an able review 200, to direct his attention to the great Egyptian problem of the day. His acute mind was not contented with studying the enchorial inscription. He contemplated also the deciphering of the hieroglyphic character, and applied to both texts a method, in which, and in his mode of following it out, we recognise rather the sagacity of the experienced mathematician, than the native genius of the philologer. He endeavoured to divide the two Egyptian texts into groups, upon the basis of the Greek inscription. He prepared himself for this task by acquiring a knowledge of the Coptic tongue, and adopted Akerblad's alphabet 200 Quarterly Review, 1813. in his analysis of the enchorial text. He differed, however, in one important point from that critic, inasmuch as he assumed that this character contained symbolic as well as alphabetic signs. He endeavoured to subdivide the hieroglyphic text into paragraphs by comparing its recurring groups of characters with the words or sentences repeated in the Greek text, and with the enchorial signs to which they were supposed to correspond. So rapid was the progress of his researches, that, as early as November, 1814, he was enabled to offer "A conjectural Translation of the Egyptian Inscription of the Rosetta Stone." 201 It appeared in 1816 without his name, together with two letters to De Sacy, dated August and October, 1814. In these he states that he possessed, indeed, a previous superficial knowledge of Akerblad's alphabet, but had succeeded in deciphering the tablet by a totally different plan, namely (as he says), without concerning himself about the value of the characters of which the particular groups consist. That it was true also that he agreed with Akerblad in regard to sixteen characters, but had found them out in his own way that the inscription likewise contained symbolic signs, and about 100 different characters. The results of the researches hitherto made are summed up in his second letter to De Sacy, as follows: nineteen letters of Akerblad's, twelve of his own, to which is added a star as the sign of the end of a proper name forming the thirteenth. He then gives fifty groups of words, the first three of which are those indicated by De Sacy, and analysed by Akerblad - then follow the sixteen words which the 201 Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries as an Appendix by a learned friend to a communication of Boughton of the 19th May, 1814. Young's share of it (i. e. nearly the whole) was published (but still anonymously) in the Cambridge Mus. Crit., No. VI., which appeared in May, 1816. From this article we learn the date of the translation itself. Swedish scholar discovered and in part analysed: the rest are his own. To these he adds 150 more groups, for which he found the corresponding words in the Greek inscription, and in some cases pointed out the Coptic word. The interpretation of these groups of words is, in part, completely wrong, and in no instance supported by philological analysis. In the correspondence carried on in the course of the following year (1815), with both De Sacy and Akerblad, (the latter of whom had continued at Rome the researches commenced at Paris, but without extending the range of his discoveries 202), Young, undoubtedly, displayed the greatest acuteness, combined with admirable perseverance, in increasing the materials for investigation he had not, however, succeeded in effecting any essential improvement in his method. His happiest suggestion was the following. He found that the European collections contained a number of papyri, which, from the identity of the figurative representations at the head of the individual sections, are obviously portions of one and the same Book of the Dead. The great French work on Egypt offered him the most complete MS. hitherto known of this kind. Now this, like other MSS. of the saine book, is written in hieroglyphics, whereas the others are executed in a character which at first sight appears the same as that of the centre inscription of the Rosetta stone, and has, in reality, some signs in common with it. The collation. of these records was certainly a most fortunate idea, although his mode of following it out, being itself erroneous, necessarily led Young into great errors, and could in no case tend to the accomplishment of his object. His next step, however, was quite in a right direction-the assumption that the character on the stone, and the one in the hieratic papyri, exhibit traces 202 Mus. Crit., No. VI. of their derivation from the hieroglyphics, by the gradual formation of a running hand. But from this point onwards he went completely astray. These two hypotheses, with the previous one, of the existence of symbolic signs in both the hieroglyphic and the cursive character, became the groundwork of two fallacious inferences. The first was, that the hieratic character of the papyri, and the enchorial of the stone, are the same, but with this difference, that the second exhibits a still greater corruption in the sign.203 He endeavoured, indeed, with great ingenuity and partial success, to translate back the passages of the hieratic papyri and enchorial inscriptions into the hieroglyphic forms from whence they derived. But as regards the clue which the comparison of the hieroglyphical and hieratic MSS. in some degree furnishes to the decipherment of the former character, so completely had he lost it, that he goes the length of asserting that "not one single group in those hieroglyphical papyri can be recognised on the stone." 204 In 1816 205, he even went so far as to deny the existence of an alphabetic element in either the hieroglyphic or the hieratic character. Yet he still held the hieratic to be not only the written character of the same language, but also essentially the same mode of writing it. So little in 203 Letter to Sylvestre de Sacy, August 3, 1815. He calls the hieratic papyri imitations of hieroglyphics, adopted as monograms or verbal characters mixed with the letters of the alphabet... “The only remaining hope appears to be, that we may be able to interpret the Old Egyptian MSS. in general by means of the hieroglyphics." 204 "It is remarkable that not a single group has been observed (viz. in the hieroglyphic MSS. of the Book of the Dead) that affords a word distinguishable upon the Rosetta stone." 205 Letter to the Archduke John of Austria in the Mus. Crit., No. VII. (Dec. 1821). By comparing the hieroglyphic MS. of the great Egyptian work with others "in the running hand," it is established "that the characters agreed throughout with each other in such a manner as completely to put an end to the idea of the alphabetical nature of any of them." "206 fact was he able to turn to account his theory of a connection between the hieroglyphic and the cursive character, considered as a gradual corruption of the hieroglyphic signs, that he expressly declared in 1816, "that nothing more could be discovered in this cursive character than a sort of syllabic writing for proper names.' So firmly were these views impressed on his mind, that his closer and more philological limitation and definition of them, in his treatise of 1819 on the language and writing of the Egyptians 207, which, however, formed an epoch in the inquiry, led him in many points still further from the truth, and in no instance to any certain or philologically accurate result. Afterwards, indeed, he was led clearly to perceive the difference between the hieratic and enchorial writing, chiefly by a more careful collation of the demotic papyri; but he calls the latter a second corrupt form of the hieroglophics, the hieratic character being the first.208 He gives no proof of this; indeed his method neither aims at, nor admits of, any strict philological demonstration; but, besides, the assumption is incorrect. It is as impossible to deduce and explain the demotic from the hieratic character, as it is false to define it to be purely alphabetical, as Akerblad has done. There was, however, one very happy result of his speculations embodied in this treatise, and which, by the impression it made upon Champollion, led to the greatest discovery of the century, the alphabet of the Old Egyptian language and character. But it would be a very false view of the matter to suppose that he 206 Ibid. "A loose imitation of the hieroglyphic characters may even be traced by means of the intermediate steps in the enchorial name of Ptolemy (on the Rosetta stone). At the same time it can hardly be denied that something like a syllabic alphabet may be discovered in all the proper names." 207 Supplements to the former editions of the Encyc. Brit., vol. iv. Dec. 1819. 208 Ibid. p. 54. |