His Successors. For a good many years after this, Egyptian archaeology was chiefly cultivated by dilettanti, whose knowledge of the language seldom extended beyond the decipherment of royal names. Whole systems of Egyptian chronology have been devised by men incapable of reading and understanding a single line of Egyptian. Till 1850, the only genuine scholars who can be mentioned in addition to Lepsius, are Mr. Birch and Dr. Hincks in this country, M. Emmanuel de Rougé in France, and Dr. Brugsch (then a very young man) in Germany. But every one of these was a scholar of more than average ability, and has left his mark for ever upon the science. The important discoveries of M. Mariette belong to the next period, as also do the first works of M. Chabas and Mr. Goodwin, two scholars whose translations of some of the most difficult texts in the language caused the study of it to advance with gigantic strides. Since 1860, and particularly since the foundation in 1863 at Berlin of a journal in which everything connected with the language or archaeology of ancient Egypt might be discussed, the number of highly distinguished scholars has greatly increased. A very valuable journal of the same kind was founded in Paris in the year 1872. The names of Dümichen, Lauth, Ebers, Stern, Eisenlohr, Wiedeman, Bergman and Reinisch in Germany and Austria, Pleyte in Holland, Lieblein in Sweden, Golenischeff in Russia, Dévéria, J. de Rougé, Horrack, Maspero, Lefébure, Pierret, Grébaut, Robiou, Baillet and Rochemonteix in France, Naville at Geneva, Rossi, Szedlo and Schiaparelli in Italy, are authorities familiar to every Egyptologist. To these I must add Canon Cook and Professor Lushington in this country. Recovery of the Ancient Language. It is not without a melancholy feeling that I enumerate these names (many of them belonging to dear and valued friends), for the hand of death has already thinned our ranks, and some of us are growing old and disabled. The spell, however, is broken; the language of ancient Egypt has really been recovered-slowly, it is true, and step by step. The decipherment of a language does not at once put us in possession of a language. The ancient Etruscan writings are read with ease, but they are as unintelligible as ever. The relationship between Coptic and old Egyptian happily enabled Champollion to find the meanings of many words and the general sense of entire inscriptions. But the old Egyptian vocabulary, besides representing an earlier stage of the language, is very much more extensive than the Coptic, and the greater part of the words which compose it had to be recovered, one after another, by an inductive process. The truth of the vocabulary which has thus gradually been built up is verified by its enabling to read and understand entire documents of every kind. This alone ought to be considered sufficient proof, for no imaginary vocabulary can possibly adapt itself to the needs of an indefinite number of texts. But sceptics who are incapacitated by their imperfect acquaintance with the processes of philological science from feeling the force of this proof, may at least be referred to the confirmation of our Vocabulary by the bilingual inscription of Canopus. In 1866, Dr. Lepsius discovered a tablet at San, in Lower Egypt, of the same nature as the Rosetta stone; that is to say, containing inscriptions in old Egyptian, demotic and Greek, but much more considerable in extent and quite perfect. The sense of this tablet, according to the vocabulary already received among Egyptologists, exactly agreed with that given by the Greek text. And the truth of the Grammar is proved in the same manner. Already in 1860, M. de Rougé declared that there was no kind of Egyptian text the translation of which might not be undertaken if only the necessary pains were employed. We are now able to read and understand not only the splendid and accurate texts of the public inscriptions, but the wretched scrawls of manuscripts in the cursive character. And some scholars Mr. Goodwin, for instance, and Mr. Chabas, and before them Dr. Birch and M. de Rougé— have successfully translated texts so frightfully mutilated that in many places only fragments of letters were visible. But their familiarity with the cursive character enabled them to restore the text with an accuracy of which no competent critic can entertain a doubt. When I speak of our being able to read and comprehend the language, you will not understand me as implying that all Egyptologists are equally learned and skilful. Nor are all Egyptian texts equally easy of translation. As in all languages, some are very easy and others extremely difficult. There is one long and most interesting document, of which I shall have occasion to speak later on, which will, I fear, long continue to baffle the efforts of translators. Publication of Egyptian Texts. The progress of the study was greatly retarded at first by the difficulty of obtaining authentic copies of 1 Other questions than those of a purely philological nature often arise in reference to the texts translated. I do not quarrel with the translations given by M. de Rougé and other scholars of the great texts describing the invasion of Egypt in the time of Seti II. But I have always considered the identification of the foreign invaders with the Achaeans, Tyrrhenians, Sardinians and Sicilians, as in the highest degree improbable. Nor do I believe that the Danai or the Pelasgi have been really identified under hieroglyphic spelling. When we reflect that Deutschland is called Allemagne in French and Germany in English, that the people called Dutch by us are called Hollandais by the French, that the Greeks only knew themselves as Hellenes, that the name Egypt was unknown to the inhabitants of that country, and that its real name, Kamit, was unknown to Greeks and Romans, we should be very cautious in identifying names on the mere strength of similarity in sound. Egyptian texts. Almost all the old copies, not even excepting those made by Belzoni, are absolutely worthless. Science is insatiate, and its wants can never be adequately supplied, yet much has been done, both through the unassisted efforts of private individuals and through the munificence of governments and public bodies. The collection of published Egyptian texts which can be relied upon is now very considerable. To the plates contained in the Description de l'Egypte published in 1809 by the French government, as the result of a great scientific expedition, must be added the collections of Champollion, Rosellini and Prisse d'Avennes, Burton's Excerpta Hieroglyphica, Sharpe's Egyptian Inscriptions, Dr. Leemans's Monumens Egyptiens du Musée de Leide, Ungarelli's Obelisks, the magnificent Denkmaeler of Lepsius, the Hieratic Papyri of the British Museum, and many other splendid publications bearing the names of Lepsius, Chabas, Bonomi, Rhind, Brugsch, Dümichen, Mariette Bey, E. de Rougé, Rossi and Pleyte, Naville, Ebers and Stern, Maspero, Guyesse, Golenischeff, Bergman, Wiedeman and others. Some of these costly works reproduce the original text in facsimile; in some of them the accuracy of the сору is secured by photography. But large as is the collection of these texts, it is but a fragment of the texts actually in existence. Mariette Bey has published four folio volumes of plates from the temple of Denderah alone, but he |