DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS.....TO WIT:

District Clerk's Office.

BE it remembered, that on the thirteenth day of September, A. D. 1830, in the fifty fifth year of the Independence of the United States of America, PERKINS & MARVIN, of the said District, have deposited in this Office the Title of a Book, the right whereof they claim as Proprietors, in the words following, to wit:

"Essay on the Hieroglyphic System of M. Champollion, Jun. and on the Advantages which it offers to Sacred Criticism. By J. G. H. Greppo, Vicar General of Belley. Translated from the French by Isaac Stuart, with Notes and Illustrations. Posuit Dominus in Ægypto signa sua."

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled "An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned:" and also to an Act entitled "An Act supplementary to an Act entitled An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned; and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving and etching historical and other prints."

JNO. W.

DAVIS,}

Clerk of the District of Massachusetts.

T. R. MARVIN.......Printer.

PREFACE.

THE interest which the Christian public is now taking in the subject of Egyptian Hieroglyphics, renders it desirable that some work should appear, which may impart the information necessary to gratify literary and religious curiosity. Egypt was the mother of the arts, sciences, letters, and learning, in the ancient western world. Its history, at a very remote period, stands connected with that of the people of God. The philosopher as well as the Christian, then, cannot help feeling a deep interest, in having the dust of ages which has covered the monuments and the glory of Egypt, swept away; and in seeing her rising from her obscurity and ruins, with renovated splendor.

The great problem of Hieroglyphics is at last solved; and the veil has been lifted up which hid from past ages the mysteries that lay concealed under them. We now know, that they were usually employed as mere alphabetic letters; that when thus read, they give us regular composition in the Coptic or old Egyptian language; and that, as the Coptic is understood