Champollion, Sein Leben und sein Werk, Berlin, 1906. [With Introductions by Maspero and Meyer.] His 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 Égyptien de Turin (avec Notices chronologiques par ChampollionFigeac), 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 Égyptiens du Musée du Vatican, Rome, 1826; Monuments de l'Egypte et de la Nubie, 4 Vols., fol., 440 planches, Paris, 1829-47; Lettres écrites pendant son voyage en Égypte, 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 Égyptienne, aux Principes généraux de l'Écriture sacrée Égyptienne appliqués à la représentation de la langue parlée; . . . Avec des prolégomènes et un portrait de l'éditeur, M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris, 1836-41; Dictionnaire Égyptien, en écriture hiéroglyphique, publié d'après les manuscrits autographes. par Champollion-Figeac, 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 May 19th, 1814, and was published the following year in Archaeologia, 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 Åkerblad. In 1802 M. Åkerblad, 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 Égyptienne 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. Åkerblad had been doing, and saying, “I doubt whether the alphabet which Mr. Åkerblad

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

has given us can be of much further utility than in enabling us to decipher the proper names; and sometimes I have 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 d'approbation que j'ai donnée au système de M. Akerblad, dans la réponse que je lui ai adressée, il m'est toujours resté 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 Égyptien de l'inscription de Rosette. M. Champollion, qui vient de publier deux volumes sur l'ancienne géographie de l'Égypte, 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. Åkerblad que dans celles de M. Champollion, mais tant qu'ils n'auront publié quelque résultat de leur travail, il est juste de suspendre son jugement." (Leitch, Vol. III, p. 17.)

Writing to M. de Sacy in October of the same year, Young says: "I had read Mr. Åkerblad'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. Åkerblad'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 again read Mr. Akerblad's work; and I have found that it agrees almost in every instance with the results of my own 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 Åkerblad 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.)

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., etc., ed. John Leitch, London, 1855.

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

.

Nearly three weeks after writing the above, Young sent another letter to M. de Sacy, together with a Coptic and a demotic alphabet, derived partly from Åkerblad, 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 Åkerblad, and the remainder by himself." In January, 1815, Åkerblad 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 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 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 Åkerblad.

.

In July, 1815, de Sacy sent a letter to Young, which contains the following remarkable passages: Monsieur, outre la traduction Latine de l'inscription Egyptienne que vous m'avez communiquée, j'ai reçu postérieurement une autre traduction 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 de vous. 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

K

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 August 3rd, 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 number of the radical characters is indeed limited, like that of the keys of the Chinese; but it appears that these characters are by no means universally independent of each other, a combination of two or three of them being often employed to form a single word, and perhaps even to represent a simple idea; and, indeed, this must necessarily happen where we have only about a thousand characters for the expression of a whole language. For the same reason it is impossible that all the characters can be pictures of the things which they represent some, however, of the symbols on the stone of Rosetta have a manifest relation to the objects denoted by them. For instance, a Priest, a Shrine, a Statue, an Asp, a Mouth, and the Numerals, and a King is denoted by a sort of plant with an insect, which is said to have been a bee; while a much greater number of the characters have no perceptible connection with the ideas attached to them; although it is probable that a resemblance, either real or metaphorical, may have existed or have been imagined when they were first employed; thus a Libation was originally denoted by a hand holding a jar, with two streams of a liquid issuing from it, but in this inscription the representation has degenerated into a bird's foot. With respect to the epistolographic or enchorial character, it does not seem quite certain that it could be explained even if the hieroglyphics were perfectly understood, for many of the characters neither resemble the corresponding hieroglyphics, nor are capable of being satisfactorily resolved into an alphabet of any kind in short, the two characters might be supposed to belong to different languages; for they do not seem to agree even in their manner of forming compound from simple terms." (Leitch, pp. 55, 56.)

Writing to de Sacy in the following year (May 5th, 1816) touching the question of the alphabetic nature of the inscription on the Rosetta Stone, Young says: "Si vous lisez la lettre de M. Åkerblad, vous conviendrez, je crois, qu'au moins il n'a pas été plus heureux que moi dans ses leçons Coptes de l'inscription. Mais le vrai est que la

chose est impossible dans l'étendue que vous paraissez encore vouloir lui donner, car assurément l'inscription enchoriale n'est alphabétique que dans un sens très borné. . . . Je me suis borné dernièrement à l'étude des hiéroglyphes, ou plutôt à la collection d'inscriptions hiéroglyphiques. . . . . . Les caractères que j'ai découverts jettent déjà quelques lumières sur les antiquités de l'Égypte. J'ai reconnu, par exemple, le nom de Ptolémée dans diverses inscriptions à Philæ, à Esné et à Ombos, ce qui fixe à peu près la date des édifices où ce nom se trouve, et c'est même quelque chose que de pouvoir distinguer dans une inscription quelconque les caractères qui expriment les noms des personnages auxquels elle a rapport." (Leitch, p. 60.)

On November 10th, 1814, Champollion sent to the President of the Royal Society a copy of his L'Égypte sous les Pharaons, and in the letter which accompanied it said: "La base de mon travail est la lecture de l'inscription en caractères Égyptiens, qui est l'un des plus beaux ornemens du riche Musée Britannique; je veux parler du monument trouvé à Rosette. Les efforts que j'ai faits pour y réussir n'ont point été, s'il m'est permis de le dire, sans quelques succès; et les résultats que je crois avoir obtenus après une étude constante et suivie, m'en font espérer de plus grands encore." (Leitch, p. 63.) He asked also that a collation of the Rosetta Stone with the copy of it which he possessed might be made, and suggested that a cast of it should be presented to each of the principal libraries and to the most celebrated Academies of Europe. As Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, Young replied saying that the needful collation should be made, and adding, "Je ne sais si par hasard M. de Sacy, avec qui vous êtes sans doute en correspondance, vous aura parlé d'un exemplaire que je lui ai adressé de ma traduction conjecturale avec l'explication des dernières lignes des caractères hieroglyphiques. Je lui avais déjà envoyé la traduction de l'inscription Égyptienne au commencement du mois d'Octobre passé ; l'interprétation des hiéroglyphiques ne m'est réussie qu'à la fin du même mois." (Leitch, p. 64.) In reply to this Champollion wrote, “M. Silvestre de Sacy, mon ancien professeur, ne m'a point donné connaissance de votre mémoire sur la partie Égyptienne et le texte hiéroglyphique de l'inscription de Rosette; c'est vous dire, Monsieur, avec quel empressement je recevrai l'exemplaire que vous avez la bonté de m'offrir." But it is clear from the facts given above and the extracts from letters of Young and de Sacy that Young had already done in October, 1814, what Champollion in November, 1814, also claimed to have done.

On August 2nd, 1816, Young addressed a letter1 to the Archduke John of Austria, in which he reported further progress in his hieroglyphic studies, thus: "I have already ascertained, as I have

1 This letter was printed in 1816, and circulated in London, Paris, and elsewhere; it did not appear in the Museum Criticum until 1821.