June, 1824, Champollion arrived in Turin, where he devoted Champollion's himself to the study of papyri. Early in 1825 he arrived in travels. Rome, and thence he went to Naples, where all the museums were opened for him. In 1826 he returned to Paris. In July, Visits Egypt. 1828, he set out on his long planned voyage to Egypt, and returned in March, 1830, bringing with him a fine collection of antiquities, and a number of copies of inscriptions which filled about two thousand pages. As soon as he returned to France he set to work to publish the rich results of his travels, but while occupied with this undertaking, death overtook him on the 4th of March, 1832. Louis-Philippe ordered that busts of him, executed at the expense of the civil list, should be placed in the galleries of the palace at Versailles, and in the rooms of the Egyptian Museum of the Louvre ; he also ordered that marble for another bust should be given to Champollion-Figeac, and that the carving thereof should be entrusted to the famous sculptor Etex. An etched portrait of Champollion le Jeune will be found in Les Deux Champollion, leur Vie et leurs Euvres, par Aimé ChampollionFigeac : Grenoble, 1887, p. 52.

In addition to the works of Champollion mentioned above, the following are the most important :

Rapport à son Excellence M. le Duc de Doudeauville, sur la Collection Egyptienne à Livourne, Paris, 1826.

Lettres à M. le Duc de Blacas d'Aulps relatives au Musée royal Egyptien de Turin ..... (avec Notices chronologiques par Champollion-Figeac): Paris, 1824–26.

Notice sur les papyrus hiératiques et les peintures du cercueil de Pétaménoph (Extr. de Voyage à Meroë par Cailliaud de Nantes), Paris, 1827.

Notice descriptive des Monuments Egyptiens du Musée Charles X, Paris, 1827.

Catalogue de la Collection Egyptienne du Louvre, Paris,

1827.

Catalogue des Papyrus Egyptiens du Musée du Vatican, Rome, 1826.

Champollion's works.

Young's labours on the Rosetta Stone in 1814.

Monuments de l'Egypte et de la Nubie, iv vols., fol., 440 planches. Publié par ordre du Gouvernement, pour faire suite à l'ouvrage de l'Expédition d'Egypte, Paris, 1829-1847.

Lettres écrites pendant son voyage en Egypte, en 1828, 1829, Paris, 1829; 2me édition, Paris, 1833; collection complète. A German translation by E. F. von Gutschmid was published at Quedlinburg, in 1835.

Grammaire Egyptienne, aux Principes généraux de l'écriture sacrée Egyptienne appliqués à la représentation de la langue parlée; ..... Avec des prolégomènes et un portrait de l'éditeur, M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris, 1836-1841.

Dictionnaire Egyptien, en écriture hieroglyphique, publié d'après les manuscrits autographes par ChampollionFigeac, Paris, 1841.

.....

The results of Dr. Young's studies of the Rosetta Stone were first communicated to the Royal Society of Antiquaries in a letter from Sir W. E. Rouse Boughton, Bart.; the letter was read on the 19th of May, 1814, and was published the following year in Archeologia, Vol. XVIII. pp. 59–72.1 The letter was accompanied by a translation of the demotic text on the Rosetta Stone, which was subsequently reprinted anonymously in the Museum Criticum of Cambridge, Pt. VI., 1815, together with the correspondence which took place between Dr. Young and MM. Silvestre de Sacy and Akerblad. In 1802 M. Akerblad, the Swedish President at Rome, published his Lettre sur l'inscription Egyptienne de Rosette, adressée au citoyen Silvestre de Sacy, in which he gave the results of his study of the demotic text of the Rosetta Stone; M. Silvestre de Sacy also had occupied himself in the same way (see his Lettre au citoyen Chaptal, au sujet de l'inscription Egyptienne du monument trouvé à Rosette: Paris, 1802), but neither scholar had made any progress in the decipherment of the hieroglyphic text. In August, 1814, Dr. Young wrote to Silvestre de Sacy, asking him what Mr. Akerblad had been doing, and saying, "I doubt whether the alphabet which Mr. Akerblad has given us can be of much further utility than in enabling Young and us to decipher the proper names; and sometimes I have de Sacy.

Correspondence between

1 Letter to the Rev. S. Weston respecting some Egyptian Antiquities. With 4 copper plates. London, 1814.

2

Akerblad's

even suspected that the letters which he has identified resemble the syllabic sort of characters by which the Chinese express the sounds of foreign languages, and that in their usual acceptation they had different significations: but of this conjecture I cannot at present speak with any great confidence.".....1 To this M. de Sacy replied: .... "Je ne vous dissimule pas, Monsieur, que malgré l'espèce De Sacy's d'approbation que j'ai donnée au système de M. Akerblad, opinions of dans la réponse que je lui ai adressée, il m'est toujours resté works. des doutes très forts sur la validité de l'alphabet qu'il s'est fait...... Je dois vous ajouter que M. Akerblad n'est pas le seul qui se flatte d'avoir lu le texte Egyptien de l'inscription de Rosette. M. Champollion, qui vient de publier deux volumes sur l'ancienne géographie de l'Egypte, et qui s'est beaucoup occupé de la langue Copte, prétend avoir aussi lu cette inscription. Je mets assurément plus de confiance dans les lumières et la critique de M. Akerblad que dans celles de De Sacy M. Champollion, mais tant qu'ils n'auront publié quelque Chamrésultat de leur travail, il est juste de suspendre son juge- pollion's ment." (Leitch, Vol. III. p. 17.) Writing to M. de Sacy in October of the same year, Young says: "I had read Mr. Akerblad's essay but hastily in the course of the last winter, and I was not disposed to place much confidence in the little that I recollected of it; so that I was able to enter anew upon the investigation, without being materially influenced by what he had published; and though I do not profess to lay claim to perfect originality, or to deny the importance of Mr. Akerblad's labours, I think myself authorised to consider my own translation as completely independent of his ingenious researches: a circumstance which adds much to the probability of our conjectures where they happen to agree. It is only since I received your obliging letter, that I have Young on again read Mr. Akerblad's work; and I have found that it agrees almost in every instance with the results of my own

1 For these letters I am indebted to the third volume of the Miscellaneous Works of the late Thomas Young, M.D., F.R.S., &c., ed. John Leitch, London, 1855.

2 L'Egypte sous les Pharaons, ou recherches sur la Géographie, la Religion, la Langue, les Ecritures, et l'Histoire de l'Egypte, Paris, 1814.

distrusts

results.

Akerblad's labours.

investigation respecting the sense attributed to the words which the author has examined. This conformity must be allowed to be more satisfactory than if I had followed, with perfect confidence, the path which Akerblad has traced: I must however, confess that it relates only to a few of the first steps of the investigation; and that the greatest and the most difficult part of the translation still remains unsupported by the authority of any external evidence of this kind." (Leitch, p. 18.) Nearly three weeks after writing the above, Young sent another letter to M. de Sacy, together with a Coptic and demotic alphabet derived partly from Akerblad, and partly from his own researches, and a list of eighty-six demotic words with the words corresponding to them in the Greek version. Of these words, he says: "Three were observed by de Sacy, sixteen by Akerblad, and the remainder by himself." In January, 1815, Akerblad addressed a long letter to Young, together with which he sent a translation of some lines of the Rosetta Stone inscription, and some notes upon it. Regarding his own work he says: During the ten years which have Akerblad's elapsed since my departure from Paris, I have devoted but a few moments, and those at long intervals, to the monument of Rosetta..... For, in fact, I have always felt that the results of my researches on this monument are deficient in that sort of evidence which carries with it full conviction, and you, Sir, as well as M. de Sacy, appear to be of my opinion in this respect..... I must however give you notice beforehand, that in most cases you will only receive a statement of my doubts and uncertainties, together with a few more plausible conjectures; and I shall be fully satisfied if these last shall appear to deserve your attention and approbation.... If again the inscriptions were engraved in a clear and distinct character like the Greek and Latin inscriptions of a certain antiquity, it would be easy, by the assistance of the proper names of several Greek words which occur in it, some of which I have discovered since the publication of my letter to M. de Sacy, and of many Egyptian words, the sense of which is determined; it would be easy, I say, to form a perfectly correct alphabet of these letters; but here another difficulty occurs; the alphabetical characters which, without doubt, are

doubts

about

his own

labours.

of very high antiquity in Egypt, must have been in common use for many centuries before the date of the decree; in the course of this time, these letters, as has happened in all other countries, have acquired a very irregular and fanciful form, so as to constitute a kind of running hand." (Leitch, p. 33.) In August, 1815, Young replied to Akerblad's letter, and discussed the passages where his own translation differed from that of Akerblad.

de vous.

warns

Cham

In July, 1815, de Sacy sent a letter to Young, which De Sacy contains the following remarkable passages : "Monsieur, Young outre la traduction Latine de l'inscription Egyptienne que vous against m'avez communiquée, j'ai reçu postérieurement une autre tra- pollion. duction Anglaise, imprimée, que je n'ai pas en ce moment sous les yeux, l'ayant prêtée à M. Champollion sur la demande que son frère m'en a faite d'après une lettre qu'il m'a dit avoir reçue Je pense, Monsieur, que vous êtes plus avancé aujourd'hui et que vous lisez une grande partie, du moins, du texte Egyptien. Si j'ai un conseil à vous donner, c'est de ne pas trop communiquer vos découvertes à M. Champollion. Il se pourrait faire qu'il prétendit ensuite à la priorité. Il cherche en plusieurs endroits de son ouvrage à faire croire qu'il a découvert beaucoup des mots de l'inscription Egyptienne de Rosette. J'ai bien peur que ce ne soit là que du charlatanisme; j'ajoute même que j'ai de fortes raisons de le penser. . . . . Au surplus, je ne saurais me persuader que si M. Akerblad, Et. Quatremère, ou Champollion avait fait des progrès réels dans la lecture du texte Egyptien, ils ne se fussent pas plus empressés de faire part au public de leur découverte. Ce serait une modestie bien rare, et dont aucun d'eux ne me paraît capable." (Leitch, p. 51.)

In a letter to de Sacy, dated 3rd August, 1815, Young says: "You may, perhaps, think me too sanguine in my expectations of obtaining a knowledge of the hieroglyphical language in general from the inscription of Rosetta only; and I will confess to you that the difficulties are greater than a superficial view of the subject would induce us to suppose. The Young number of the radical characters is indeed limited, like on hieroglyphics. that of the keys of the Chinese; but it appears that these characters are by no means universally independent of each