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other, a combination of two or three of them being often em. ployed 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 connexion 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 (5th May, 1816) touching the question of the alphabetic nature of the inscription on the Rosetta Stone, he says: "Si vous lisez la lettre de M. Akerblad, 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'Egypte. J'ai

name of

reconnu, par exemple, le nom de Ptolémée dans diverses Young deinscriptions à Philæ, à Esné et à Ombos, ce qui fixe à peu ciphers the près la date des édifices où ce nom se trouve, et c'est même Ptolemy. 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 10th November, 1814, Champollion sent to the President of the Royal Society a copy of his L'Egypte sous les Pharaons, and in the letter which accompanied it said, "La base de mon travail est la lecture de l'inscription en caractères Egyptiens, 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 Young and étude constante et suivie, m'en font espérer de plus grands lion cor encore." (Leitch, p. 63.) He asked also that a collation of respond. 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 hiéroglyphiques. Je lui avais déjà envoyé la traduction de l'inscription Egyptienne 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 Egyptienne et le texte hiéroglyphique de l'inscription de Rosette: c'est vous dire, Monsieur, avec quel empressement je recevrai Cham l'exemplaire que vous avez la bonté de m'offrir." We have seen above from the extract from a letter of de Sacy that a copy of Young's work was lent to Champollion between May 9 and July 20, 1815.

pollion acquainted with Young's work in

1815.

Young's work published.

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On August 2, 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 mentioned in one of my letters to M. de Sacy, that the enchorial inscription of Rosetta contained a number of individual characters resembling the corresponding hieroglyphics, and I was not disposed to place any great reliance on the alphabetical interpretation of any considerable part of the inscription. I have now fully demonstrated the hieroglyphical origin of the running hand,' in which the manuscripts on papyrus, found with the mummies (Leitch, p. 74) The principal contents of Young's letters, however, incorporated with other matter, were made into a more extensive article, which was contributed to the Supplement of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Supplement, Vol. IV. He made drawings of the plates, which were engraved by Mr. Turrell, and having procured separate copies, he sent them to some of his friends in the summer of 1818, with a cover on which was printed the title, "Hieroglyphical Vocabulary." These plates, however, were precisely the same that were afterwards contained in the fourth volume of the Supplement, as belonging to the article EGYPT. The characters explained in this vocabulary amounted to about two hundred; the number which had been immediately obtained from the stone of Rosetta having been somewhat more than doubled by means of a careful examination of other monuments. . . . numerals were readily obtained by a comparison of some inscriptions in which they stood combined with units and with tens. Young's article in the Encyclopædia Britannica obtained great celebrity in Europe; and was reprinted by

The higher

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

2 "Que ce second système (l'Hiératique) n'est qu'une simple modification du système Hieroglyphique, et n'en diffère uniquement que par la forme des signes." Champollion, De l'Ecriture Hiératique des Anciens Egyptiens: Grenoble, 1821. We should have expected some reference by Champollion to Young's discovery quoted above.

3 Young. An Account of some recent discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature, p. 17.

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, Encyclo-
pædia
there would have been less doubt in the minds of scholars as Britan
to the good work which he did, and results borrowed from it nica.
by Champollion would have been more easily identified.'

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 Alle Aegypten, p. 446.

studies in

1810.

Ptolémée Epiphane. Ce décret est écrit en hieroglyphes, 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 Cham- Rosette, et de l'alphabet que nous avons adopté. Nous nous pollion's hierooccuperons 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.

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