lines of demotic, and fifty-four lines of Greek. (See Southern Egyptian Gallery, No. 960.) It was found in 1798 by a French officer of artillery named Boussard, among the ruins of Fort Saint Julien, near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, and was removed, in 1799, to the Institut National at Cairo, to be examined by the learned; and Napoleon ordered the inscription to be engraved and copies of it to be submitted to the scholars and learned societies of Europe. In 1801 it passed into the possession of the British, and it was sent to England in February, 1802. It was exhibited for a few months in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries, and then was finally deposited in the British Museum.

The first translation of the Greek text was made by Du Theil and Weston, in 1801-02, and they rightly declared that the stone was set up as the result of a Decree passed at the General Council of Egyptian priests assembled at Memphis to celebrate the first commemoration of the coronation of Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, king of all Egypt. The young king had been crowned in the eighth year of his reign, therefore the first commemoration took place in the ninth year, in the spring of the year, B.C. 196. The Decree sets forth that, because the king had given corn and money from his private resources to the temples, and had remitted taxes and released prisoners, and had abolished the pressgang and restored the worship of the gods, etc., the priests decreed that: Additional honours be paid to the king and his ancestors; an image of the king be set up in every temple; a statue and shrine be set up in every temple; a monthly festival be established on the birthday and coronation day of the king; this Decree be engraved upon a hard stone stele in the writing of the priests (hieroglyphic), in the writing of books (demotic), and in the writing of the Greeks (Greek), and set up in every temple of the first, second, and third class, by the side of the image of the king.

In 1802 Åkerblad succeeded in making out the general meaning of several lines of the demotic text, and in identifying the equivalents of the names Alexander, Alexandria, Ptolemy, etc. In 1819 Thomas Young published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. IV, the results of his studies of the texts, and among them. was a list of several alphabetic Egyptian characters to which, in most cases, he had assigned correct values. He was the first to grasp the idea of a phonetic principle in the reading of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and he was the first to apply it to their decipherment. Warburton, De Guignes, Barthélemy and Zoëga all suspected the existence

of alphabetic hieroglyphics, and the three last-named scholars believed that the oval, or cartouche contained

a royal name; but it was Young who first proved both points and successfully deciphered the name of Ptolemy on the Rosetta Stone, and that of Berenice on another monument, and it was Bankes who first identified the name of Cleopatra. The list of alphabetic characters was much enlarged in 1822 by the eminent scholar Champollion, who not only correctly deciphered the names and titles of most of the Roman Emperors, but drew up classified lists of the hieroglyphics, and formulated a system of grammar and general decipherment which is the foundation upon which all subsequent Egyptologists have worked. The discovery of the correct alphabetic values of Egyptian signs was most useful for reading names, but, for translating the language, a competent knowledge of Coptic was required. Now Coptic is only another name for Egyptian. The Egyptian Christians are called "Copts," and the Holy Scriptures, Liturgies, etc., which they translated from Greek soon after their conversion to Christianity, are said to be written in "Coptic." The knowledge of Coptic has never been lost, and a comparatively large sacred literature has always been available for study by scholars. Champollion, quite early in the nineteenth century, realized the great importance of Coptic for the purpose of Egyptian decipherment, and he made himself the greatest Coptic scholar of his time. His knowledge of Coptic was deep and wide, and to this important qualification much of his success is due. Having once obtained a correct value of many alphabetic and syllabic characters, his knowledge of Coptic helped him to deduce the values of others, and to assign meanings to Egyptian words with marvellous accuracy.

The method by which the greater part of the Egyptian alphabet was recovered is this: It was assumed correctly that the cartouche always contained a royal name. The only cartouche on the Rosetta Stone was assumed to contain the name Ptolemy. An obelisk brought from Philae about that time contained a hieroglyphic inscription, and a translation of it in Greek, which mentioned two names, Ptolemy and Cleopatra, and one of the cartouches was filled with hieroglyphic characters which were identical with those in the cartouche on the Rosetta Stone. Thus there was good reason to believe that the cartouche on the Rosetta Stone contained the name of Ptolemy written in hieroglyphic characters. Here is the cartouche which was assumed to

represent the name Ptolemaios, or Ptolemy, the hieroglyphics being numbered (A)—

and here is the cartouche which was assumed to represent the name Cleopatra (B)—

Now in B, the first sign, 4, must represent K; it is not found in A. No. 2 sign,, is identical with No. 4 sign in A. This was assumed to be L. No. 3 sign, , represents a vowel, and doubled,, is found in A, No. 6. No. 4 sign, , is identical with No. 3 in A, and it must have the value of O in both A and B. No. 5 sign, □, is identical with No. 1 in A, and as A contains the name Ptolemy, the first sign, a, must be P. No. 6 sign,, is wanting in A, but its value must be A, because it is the same sign as No. 9, which ends the name Kleopatra. No. 7, , does not occur in A, but we see it in other cartouches taking the place of, the second letter in the name of Ptolemaios, and it must therefore be some kind of T. No. 8, ◇, we assume is R, because it is the last letter but one in the name of Kleopatra. Nos. 10 and 11 signs,, we find after the names of goddesses; the first of them is T; and the second is a "determinative." We now insert the alphabetic values in the two cartouches and obtain the following results:

In the case of A it is quite clear that PTOL is the first part

of the name of Ptolemaios, therefore 440 must represent the second part of the name, or MAIOS. We may then say that is M, and the last sign is S, and that 44 represents

some i-sound, or e-sound; in the case of B we are certain of the values of all the signs except 4, and 0, but it is clear from their positions in the name that the first two must represent K and R. We have seen that the signs are added to the names of goddesses, and as Kleopatra was regarded as a goddess, they are added to her name. They do not affect the name itself. The two royal names may now be taken out of the cartouches, and the values written under the characters thus :

sent A, L, S, E (?), T, and R. The only Greek name which contains these letters in this order is Alexandros, or Alexander, and we therefore conclude that the last sign, is S, that is K, that is A, and that is N.

A common title of the Roman Emperors was

and as we know all the signs but one (44) with certainty we write down K-S-R-S, which can only be "Kaisaros,” or "Caesar." From this we again see that represents the at

in Καίσαρος and Πτολεμαιος, or ae in Caesar.

In this way the Egyptian alphabet was recovered.

Now if we look at the last line of the Egyptian text on the Rosetta Stone we shall find that in the cartouche

(1-44)

there are several signs

which have not been explained above, viz., †