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Leitch in the third volume of the Works of Dr. Young, pp. 86-197; it contains eight sections:

I. Introductory view of the latest publications re-
lating to Egypt.

II. Pantheon.

III. Historiography.

IV. Calendar.

V. Customs and Ceremonies.

VI. Analysis of the Triple Inscription.

VII. Rudiments of a Hieroglyphical Vocabulary.
VIII. Various Monuments of the Egyptians.

This article is of very great importance in the history of Value of Young's the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, and had Young taken article in the trouble of having it printed as a separate publication, Encyclothere would have been less doubt in the minds of scholars as Britanpædia to the good work which he did, and results borrowed from it nica. by Champollion would have been more easily identified.1

It has already been said (p. 130) that Champollion published at Paris in 1814 the two first parts of a work entitled L'Egypte sous les Pharaons, ou recherches sur la Géographie, la Champollion Religion, la Langue, les Ecritures et l'Histoire de l'Egypte on the avant l'Invasion de Cambyse; these parts treated simply of geography of Egypt. the geography of Egypt. In a note to the Preface he tells us that the general plan of the work, together with the introduction of the geographical section and the general map of Egypt under the Pharaohs, was laid before the Société des Sciences et des Arts de Grenoble, 1st September, 1807, and that the printing began on the 1st September, 1810. On p. 22 of his Introduction, referring to the Rosetta Stone, he says: "Ce monument intéressant est un décret des prêtres de l'Egypte, qui décerne de grands honneurs au jeune roi

1 Ich halte mich daher verpflichtet, alles auf unsern Gegenstand bezügliche dem Leser nachträglich genau mitzutheilen und zwar mit einer um so grössern Gewissenhaftigkeit, je höher durch dessen Kenntniss die Achtung gegen den trefflichen Forscher steigen wird, der besonders in der Erklärung der symbolischen Hieroglyphen so Manches zuerst aussprach, was man ohne den Artikel der Encyclopaedie gelesen zu haben, meistens als das Eigenthum Champollion's zu betrachten gewohnt ist. Schwartze, Das Alte Aegypten, p. 446.

Champollion's hiero

studies in

1810.

Ptolémée Epiphane. Ce décret est écrit en hiéroglyphes, en langue et en écriture alphabétique Egyptiennes, et en Grec." Now by the words "en langue et en écriture alphabétique Egyptiennes" we are clearly to understand that part of the Rosetta inscription which is written in demotic. Having referred to the studies of de Sacy and Akerblad, and spoken of the words in demotic which the latter scholar had rightly compared with their equivalents in Coptic, "que nous y avons lus ensuite," Champollion adds in a foot-note, "Ce n'est pas ici le lieu de rendre compte du résultat de l'étude suivie que nous avons faite du texte Egyptien de l'Inscription de Rosette, et de l'alphabet que nous avons adopté. Nous nous occuperons de cet important sujet dans la suite de cet glyphical ouvrage. En attendant, nous prions le lecteur de regarder comme exacts les résultats que nous lui présentons ici." From this it is clear that as early as 1810 Champollion claimed to have made progress in the decipherment of the demotic text (texte Egyptien) of the Rosetta Stone, and it is now time to ask how much he was indebted to Akerblad's letter for ideas and results. A comparison of Plate II. at the end of Akerblad's Lettre sur l'Inscription Egyptienne de Rosette, with Plate IV. in Champollion's Lettre à M. Dacier relative à l'Alphabet des Hieroglyphes Phonétiques, will show that sixteen of the characters of the alphabet printed by Akerblad in 1802 were retained by Champollion in 1822; also, if Akerblad's alphabet be compared with the "Supposed Enchorial Alphabet" printed at the foot of Plate IV. acAkerblad companying Young's article EGYPT, printed in 1818 and published in 1819, it will be found that fourteen of the characters are identical in both alphabets. Thus it seems that a greater degree of credit is due to Akerblad than characters. has usually been awarded to him either by Young'

attributes

correct values to fourteen Demotic

1 Mr. Akerblad was far from having completed his examination of the whole enchorial inscription, apparently from the want of some collateral encouragement or co-operation to induce him to continue so laborious an inquiry; and he had made little or no effort to understand the first inscription of the pillar which is professedly engraved in the sacred character, except the detached observation respecting the numerals at the end; he was even disposed to acquiesce in the correctness of Mr. Palin's interpretation, which proceeds on the supposition that parts of the first lines of the hieroglyphics are still remaining on the stone. Young, An Account, p. 10.

or Champollion, or, indeed, by writers on Egyptology generally.2

Having seen what foundations Young and Champollion had for their own works on the demotic text to rest on, we may return to the consideration of Young's hieroglyphical studies. On the four plates which appeared with his article EGYPT, he correctly identified the names of a few of the gods, Rā, Nut, Thoth, Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, and he made out the meanings of several Egyptian ideographs. His identifications of kings' names were, however, most unfortunate. Thus of Amenḥetep, he made Tithons; of Thi (a queen), Eoa; of Usertsen, Heron; of Psammetichus, Sesostris ; of Nectanebus, Proteus; of Seti, Psammis; of Rameses II., Amasis; of Autocrator, Arsinoe, etc., etc. He correctly identified the names of Ptolemy and Berenice, although in each case he attributed Young's wrong values to some of the hieroglyphic characters which glyphic The hieroglyphic alphabet given by alphabet.

formed these names. Young was as follows:

:

hiero

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1 "Feu Akerblad essaya d'étendre ses lectures hors des noms propres grecs, et il échoua complètement." Champollion, Précis, 1 éd., p. 14.

2 See Schwartze, Das Alte Aegypten, pp. 160, 162.

3 No. 205, which is omitted here, is really two demotic characters the values of which are BA and R: to these Young gave the value BERE, and so far he was right, but he failed to see that what he considered to be one sign was, in reality, two. In Nos. 213 and 214 his consonants were right but his vowels were wrong. We are thus able to see that out of a total of fourteen signs, he assigned correct values to six, partly correct values to three, and wholly wrong values to five. Champollion-Figeac in his Lettre au Directeur de la Revue Britannique au sujet des Recherches du Docteur Young sur les Hieroglyphes Egyptiens, p. 5, gives Young no credit whatever for the three partly correct values assigned to hieroglyphic characters by him.

Champollion's system.

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In 1822 Champollion published his famous Lettre à M. Dacier relative à l'alphabet des Hieroglyphes Phonétiques, in which he stated his discovery of the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet in the following words: "Vous avez sans doute remarqué, Monsieur, dans mon Mémoire sur l'écriture démotique Egyptienne, que ces noms étrangers étaient exprimés phonétiquement au moyen de signes plutôt syllabiques qu'alphabétiques. La valeur de chaque caractère est reconnue et invariablement fixée par la comparaison de ces divers noms; et de tous ces rapprochements est résulté l'alphabet, ou plutôt le syllabaire démotique figuré sur ma planche I., colonne deuxième. L'emploi de ces caractères phonétiques une fois constaté dans l'écriture démotique, je devais naturellement en conclure que puisque les signes de cette écriture populaire étaient, ainsi que je l'ai exposé, empruntés de l'écriture hiératique ou sacerdotale, et puisque encore les signes de cette écriture hiératique ne sont, comme on l'a reconnu par mes divers mémoires, qu'une représentation abrégée, une véritable tachygraphie des hiérographes, cette troisième espèce d'écriture, l'hieroglyphique pure, devait avoir aussi un certain nombre de ses signes doués de la faculté d'exprimer les sons; en un mot, qu'il existait également une série d'hieroglyphes phonétiques. Pour s'assurer de la vérité de cet aperçu, pour reconnaître l'existence et discerner même la valeur de quelques-uns des signes de cette espèce, il aurait suffi d'avoir sous les yeux, écrits en hieroglyphes purs, deux noms de rois grecs préalablement connus, et contenant plusieurs lettres employées à la fois dans l'un et dans l'autre, tels que Ptolémée et Cléopâtre, Alexandre et Bérénice, etc." (p. 5). Throughout this work there

Akerblad's

appears to be no mention whatever of Young's identification of any letters of the hieroglyphic alphabet, although on p. 2 Champollion says: “A l'égard de l'écriture démotique en particulier, il a suffi de la précieuse inscription de Rosette pour en reconnaître l'ensemble; la critique est redevable d'abord Champollion aux lumières de votre illustre confrère, M. Silvestre de Sacy, admits et successivement à celles de feu Akerblad et de M. le docteur value of Young, des premières notions exactes qu'on a tirées de ce and Young's monument, et c'est de cette même inscription que j'ai déduit labours. la série des signes démotiques qui, prenant une valeur syllabico-alphabétique, exprimaient dans les textes idéographiques les noms propres des personnages étrangers à l'Egypte." That Champollion should not have known of Young's article EGYPT is a thing not to be understood, especially as advance copies were sent to Paris and elsewhere as early as 1818.

From the facts given above we are enabled to draw up the following statement as to the amount of work done in the decipherment of the Egyptian language by the early workers in this field.

of results

pollion.

Barthélemy1 and Zoëga had come to the conclusion Statement long before the labours of Akerblad, Young, and Cham- of labours pollion, that the cartouches contained proper names. Aker- of Zoëga, Akerblad, blad drew up an alphabet of the demotic character, in which Young and fourteen signs appear to have had correct values attributed Chamto them. Young published a demotic alphabet in which the greater number of Akerblad's results were absorbed; he fixed the correct values to six hieroglyphic characters, and to three others partly correct values; he identified the names of Ptolemy and Alexander, the numerals and several gods' names. Champollion published a demotic alphabet, the greater part of which he owed, without question, to Akerblad, and a hieroglyphic alphabet of which six characters had had correct values assigned to them by Young, and the

1 Caylus, Recueil d'Antiquités Egyptiennes, Etrusques, etc., Tom. V. p. 79. In De Origine et Usu Obeliscorum, p. 465. Conspiciuntur autem passim in Aegyptiis monumentis schemata quaedam ovata sive elliptica planae basi insidentia, quae emphatica ratione includunt certa notarum syntagmata, sive ad propria personarum nomina exprimenda, sive ad sacratiores formulas designandas.

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