An account of some recent discoveries in hieroglyphical literature, and Egyptian antiquities

by Thomas Young

WORKS OF THE AUTHOR;

TO BE HAD OF THE PUBLISHER.

1. A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts, 2 vols. 4to. 1807.

2. An Introduction to Medical Literature, including a System of Practical Nosology, 8vo. Second edition, 1823.

3. A Practical and Historical Treatise on Consumptive Diseases, 8vo. 1815.

4. Elementary Illustrations of the Celestial Mechanics of Laplace, 8vo. 1821.

DISCOVERIES
IN
HIEROGLYPHICAL LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH OF THE PREVALENT OPINIONS RESPECTING HIEROGLYPHICS.

The Greeks and Romans, either from national pride, or from a want of philological talent, were extremely deficient in their knowledge of all such languages as they called barbarous, and they frequently made up for their ignorance by the positiveness of their assertions, with regard to facts which were created by their own imagination. It was very currently believed, on their authority, not only that Egypt was the parent of all arts and sciences, but that the hieroglyphical inscriptions, on its public monuments, contained a summary of the most important mysteries of nature, and of the most sublime inventions of man: but that the interpretation of these characters had been so studiously concealed by the priests, from the knowledge of the vulgar, and had indeed been so imperfectly understood by themselves, that it was wholly lost and forgotten in the days of the later Roman Emperors. The story, however, of a reward, supposed to have been offered in vain by one of the first of the Caesars, for an interpretation of the inscription on an obelisc, then lately brought from Egypt to Rome, appears to rest on no authentic foundation.

Among the works of more modern authors, who had employed themselves in the study of the hieroglyphics, it is difficult to say whether those were the more discouraging, which, like the productions of Father Kircher and the Chevalier Palin, professed to contain explanations of every thing, or which, like the ponderous volume of Zoëga on the Obeliscs, confessed, after collecting all that was really on record, that the sum and substance of the whole amounted absolutely to nothing.

Father Kircher’s six folios contain some tolerably faithful, though inelegant, representations of the principal monuments of Egyptian art, which had before his days been brought to Europe: and, according to his interpretation, which succeeded equally well, whether he happened to begin at the beginning, or at the end, of each of the lines, they all contain some mysterious doctrines of religion or of metaphysics. With equal sagacity, but with much less appearance of laborious research, the Chevalier Palin, beginning, in one instance at least, by way of variety, in the middle, has more recently discovered, that Hebrew translations of many of the Egyptian consecrated rolls of papyrus are to be found, in the Bible, under the name of the Psalms of David. Whatever may be thought of the judgment of these antiquaries, their opinions are not particularly discreditable to their talents and ingenuity: for having once allowed themselves to set out with the mistaken notion, that it was possible to determine the sense of the hieroglyphics, by internal evidence and by the force of reasoning only, the imperfections of their superstructures were the unavoidable consequences of the unsubstantial nature of the foundations, on which they were raised.

There was indeed a traditional record of the true sense of one single character, denoting LIFE, which had been handed down by the ecclesiastical writers, and had been generally received as correct by scholars and antiquaries: although I cannot help suspecting that Sir Archibald Edmonstone’s memory deceives him when he remarks, that the same symbol is often substituted, in Christian inscriptions, for the simpler sign of the cross, with which they more commonly begin. We also find some imperfect hints of a partial knowledge of the sense of the hieroglyphics in the puerile work of Horapollo, which is much more like a collection of conceits and enigmas than an explanation of a real system of serious literature: and while such scattered truths were confounded with a multitude of false assertions, it was impossible to profit by any of them, without some clue to assist us in the selection. For my own part, if I had ever read of the true signification of the handled cross, it had entirely escaped my recollection.

The French expedition to Egypt was most liberally provided, by the government of the day, with a select body of antiquaries, and architects, and surveyors, and naturalists, and draughtsmen, whose business it was to investigate all that was interesting to science or to literature in that singular country. Their labours have been made public, with all the advantages of chalcographical and typographical elegance, in the splendid collection, entitled Description de l’Égypte. But it is scarcely too much to say, that the only real benefit, conferred on Egyptian literature, by that expedition, was the discovery of a huge broken block, of black stone, in digging for the foundations of Fort St. Julian, near Rosetta, which the British army had afterwards the honour of bringing to this country, as a proud trophy of their gallantry and success. It is not to a want of ability, nor of industry, nor of accuracy, nor of fidelity, in the Egyptian Commission, that so total a failure is to be attributed; but partly to the real difficulty of the subject, and still more to the preconceived opinion, which was very generally entertained by their men of letters, of the exorbitant antiquity of the Egyptian works of art, which caused them to neglect the lights, that might have been derived, from a comparison of Greek and Roman inscriptions, with the hieroglyphics in their neighbourhood; and to suppose, that whatever bore the date of less than thirty or forty centuries must necessarily be an interpolation, unconnected with the original architecture and decorations of the edifice, to which it belonged: and when a strong prejudice has once been imbibed, we all know that the senses themselves are perpetually blunted and perverted by it, even without the consent of the reasoning powers. Mr. William Hamilton had, however, very successfully brought forwards a variety of evidence, in favour of the utility of the various inscriptions of the Greeks and Romans, for ascertaining the date of many of the buildings to which they belong; and the question, thus agitated between the French and the English travellers, had already assumed somewhat of a national character.

A cursory inspection of the Greek inscription, contained in the pillar of Rosetta, was sufficient to establish, as incontrovertible, the opinion, which had been very ably maintained by our acute and learned countryman Bishop Warburton, that the hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, were not so denominated, as being exclusively appropriated to sacred subjects, but that they constituted a real written language, applicable to the purposes of history and common life, as well as to those of religion and mythology; since this inscription speaks of the three divisions of the pillar, as containing different versions of the same decree, in the sacred and the vulgar character, and in the Greek language, respectively: and, that there was no fraud in this description, was at once made evident by the just observation of Akerblad, who pointed out, at the end of the hieroglyphical inscription, the three first numerals, indicated by I, II, and III, respectively, where the Greek has “the first and the second ...”; the end being broken off. It was also evident, that the hieroglyphical language continued to be understood and employed in the time of Ptolemy Epiphanes: but here the matter rested for several years; no single representation of an existing object having been so identified, on this or any other monument among the hieroglyphics, as to have its signification determined, even by a probable conjecture.

In the mean time, the enterprising and enlightened Baron Alexander Von Humboldt was contributing to illustrate the nature of hieroglyphical languages, by his account of the Mexican drawings, contained in his Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the American nations. The symbols, however, of the Americans appear to have had little or nothing in common with those of the Egyptians. The written language of the Chinese, on the contrary, exhibits, in some cases, a much closer analogy with that of ancient Egypt: and Mr. Barrow, by his clear and concise explanation of the peculiar nature of the Chinese characters, has contributed very materially to assist us in tracing the gradual progress of the Egyptian symbols through their various forms; although the resemblance is certainly far less complete than has been supposed by Mr. Palin, who tells us, that we have only to translate the Psalms of David into Chinese, and to write them in the ancient character of that language, in order to reproduce the Egyptian papyri, that are found with the mummies.

CHAPTER II.
INVESTIGATIONS FOUNDED ON THE PILLAR OF ROSETTA.

The pillar of Rosetta was now safely and quietly deposited in the British Museum; the Society of Antiquaries had engraved, and very generally circulated, a correct copy of its three inscriptions; and several of the best scholars of the age, in particular Porson and Heyne, had employed themselves in completing and illustrating the Greek text, which constituted the third part of the inscription: and it so happened that, although no person acquainted with both these critics could hesitate to give the general preference, for acuteness of observation, and felicity of conjecture, and soundness of judgment, to the English professor, yet in this instance the superior industry and vigilance of the German had given him decidedly the advantage, with respect to two or three passages, in which their translations happen to differ.

But Greek was already sufficiently understood, both in London and at Gottingen, to make this part of the investigation comparatively insignificant. Mr. Akerblad, a diplomatic gentleman, then at Paris, but afterwards the Swedish resident at Rome, had begun to decipher the middle division of the inscription; after De Sacy had given up the pursuit as hopeless, notwithstanding that he had made out very satisfactorily the names of Ptolemy and Alexander. But both he and Mr. Akerblad proceeded upon the erroneous, or, at least imperfect, evidence of the Greek authors, who have pretended to explain the different modes of writing among the ancient Egyptians, and who have asserted very distinctly that they employed, on many occasions, an alphabetical system, composed of twenty five letters only. The characters of the second part of the inscription being called in the Greek ENCHORIA GRAMMATA, or letters of the country, it was natural to look among these for the alphabet in question: and Mr. Akerblad, having principally deduced his conclusions from the preamble of the decree, which consists in great measure of foreign proper names, persisted, to the time of his death, in believing, that this part of the inscription was throughout alphabetical. I have called these characters enchoric, or rather enchorial: Mr. Champollion has chosen to distinguish them by the term demotic, or popular; perhaps from having been in the habit of employing it before he was acquainted with the denomination which I had appropriated to them: in my opinion, the priority of my publication ought to have induced him to adopt my term, and to suppress his own, rather than to add another useless synonym, for what the ancients, when speaking with accuracy, would probably have described as the “epistolographic” form of writing employed by the Egyptians: for we have no means of determining the precise nature of the characters called popular by Herodotus.

Mr. Akerblad was far from having completed his examination of the whole enchorial inscription, apparently from the want of some collateral encouragement or cooperation, 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.

It was natural to expect, that, after the possibility of a partial success, in this part of the undertaking, had been almost demonstrated by what Mr. Akerblad had cursorily observed, the critics and chronologists of all civilised countries would have united, heart and hand, in a common effort to obtain a legitimate solution of all the doubts and difficulties, in which the early antiquities of Egypt had long remained involved. But, excepting Mr. Champollion and myself, they have all chosen to amuse themselves with their own speculations and conjectures: the mathematicians of France have continued to calculate, and the metaphysicians of England have continued to argue, upon elements which it was impossible either to prove or disprove; while the fortuitous coincidences of some accidental results, with the collateral testimony of history or of astronomy, have been forced into the service of the delusion, as evidences of the truth of the hypotheses from which they had been deduced. Nor are these amusements even at this moment discontinued, by some persons, who have shown themselves capable of doing better things.

It was early in the year 1814, that I had been examining the fragments of papyrus brought from Egypt by Mr. Boughton; and that, after looking over Mr. Akerblad’s pamphlet in a hasty manner, I communicated a few anonymous remarks on them to the Society of Antiquaries. In the summer of that year, I took the triple inscription with me to Worthing, and there proceeded to examine first the enchorial inscription, and afterwards the sacred characters. By an attentive and methodical comparison of the different parts with each other, I had sufficiently deciphered the whole, in the course of a few months, to be able to send, as an appendix to the paper printed in the Archaeologia, a translation of each of the Egyptian inscriptions considered separately, distinguishing the contents of the different lines, with as much precision as my materials would enable me to obtain. It is evident that this division of the translation supposes, in general, a distinction of the significations of the single words; and that any person, with a little attention, might retrace my steps, with regard to the sense that I attributed to each part of the two inscriptions. I was obliged to leave many important passages still subject to some doubt, and I hoped to acquire additional information, before I attempted to determine their signification with accuracy; but, having made the first great step, I concluded that many others might be added with facility and with rapidity. In this conclusion, however, I was somewhat mistaken; and when we reflect that, in the case of the Chinese, the only hieroglyphical language now extant, it is considered as a task requiring the whole labour of a learned life, to become acquainted with the greater part of the words, even among those who are in the habit of employing the same language for the ordinary purposes of life, and who have the assistance of accurate and voluminous grammars and dictionaries: we shall then be at no loss to understand that a hieroglyphical language, to be acquired by means of the precarious aid of a few monuments, which have accidentally escaped the ravages of time and of barbarism, must exhibit a combination of difficulties almost insurmountable to human industry.

I had thought it necessary, in the pursuit of the inquiry, to make myself in some measure familiar with the remains of the old Egyptian language, as they are preserved in the Coptic and Thebaic versions of the Scriptures; and I had hoped, with the assistance of this knowledge, to be able to find an alphabet, which would enable me to read the enchorial inscription at least into a kindred dialect. But, in the progress of the investigation, I had gradually been compelled to abandon this expectation, and to admit the conviction, that no such alphabet would ever be discovered, because it had never been in existence.

I was led to this conclusion, not only by the untractable nature of the inscription itself, which might have depended on my own want of information or of address, but still more decidedly by the manifest occurrence of a multitude of characters, which were obviously imperfect imitations of the more intelligible pictures, that were observable among the distinct hieroglyphics of the first inscription: such as a Priest, a Statue, and a Mattock or Plough, which were evidently, in their primitive state, delineations of the objects intended to be denoted by them, and which were as evidently introduced among the enchorial characters. But whether or no any other significant words were expressed, in the same inscription, by means of the alphabet employed in it for foreign names, I could not very satisfactorily determine.

A cursory examination of the few well identified characters, amounting to about 90 or 100, which the hieroglyphical inscription, in its mutilated state, had enabled me to ascertain, was however sufficient to prove, first, that many simple objects were represented, as might naturally be supposed, by their actual delineations; secondly, that many other objects, represented graphically, were used in a figurative sense only, while a great number of the symbols, in frequent use, could be considered as the pictures of no existing objects whatever; thirdly, that, in order to express a plurality of objects, a dual was denoted by a repetition of the character, but that three characters of the same kind, following each other, implied an indefinite plurality, which was likewise more compendiously represented by means of three lines or bars attached to a single character; fourthly, that definite numbers were expressed by dashes for units, and arches, either round or square, for tens; fifthly, that all hieroglyphical inscriptions were read from front to rear, as the objects naturally follow each other; sixthly, that proper names were included by the oval ring, or border, or cartouche, of the sacred characters, and often between two fragments of a similar border in the running hand; and, seventhly, that the name of Ptolemy alone existed on this pillar, having only been completely identified by the assistance of the analysis of the enchorial inscription. And, as far as I have ever heard or read, not one of these particulars had ever been established and placed on record, by any other person, dead or alive.

CHAPTER III.
ADDITIONAL INFERENCES, DEDUCED FROM THE EGYPTIAN MANUSCRIPTS, AND FROM OTHER MONUMENTS.

My full conviction respecting the nature and origin of the enchorial character I expressed at the end of a collection of letters, inserted in the Museum Criticum, and published in 1815. It was not, however, till the next year, that I obtained the most complete evidence of the truth of my opinion: having been obligingly accommodated, by Mr. William Hamilton, with the use of his copy of the great Description de l’Égypte, as far as it was then published, I proceeded to study its contents: and I discovered, at length, that several of the manuscripts on papyrus, which had been carefully published in that work, exhibited very frequently the same text in different forms, deviating more or less from the perfect resemblance of the objects intended to be delineated, till they became, in many cases, mere lines and curves, and dashes and flourishes; but still answering, character for character, to the hieroglyphical or hieratic writing of the same chapters, found in other manuscripts, and of which the identity was sufficiently indicated, besides this coincidence, by the similarity of the larger tablets, or pictural representations, at the head of each chapter or column, which are almost universally found on the margins of manuscripts of a mythological nature. And the enchorial inscription of the pillar of Rosetta resembled very accurately, in its general appearance, the most unpicturesque of these manuscripts. It did not, however, by any means agree, character for character, with the “sacred letters” of the first inscription, though in many instances, by means of some intermediate steps derived from the manuscripts on papyrus, the characters could be traced into each other with sufficient accuracy, to supersede every idea of any essential diversity in the principles of representation employed. The want of a more perfect correspondence could only be explained, by considering the sacred characters as the remains of a more ancient and solemn mode of expression, which had been superseded, in common life, by other words and phrases; and, in several cases, it seemed probable, that the forms of the characters had been so far degraded and confused, that the addition of a greater number of distinguishing epithets had become necessary, in order that the sense might be rendered intelligible.

A particular account of this comparison of the different modes of writing, and a detailed reference to the passages of the respective manuscripts from which they were derived, is contained in two letters, printed in 1816, as a part of the seventh number of the Museum Criticum, and of which several copies were immediately sent to Paris, and to other parts of the Continent, although the actual publication of the number was retarded till 1821.

The principal contents of these letters were, however, incorporated with other matter into a more extensive article, which I contributed in 1819 to the Supplement of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I had made drawings of the plates, which were engraved with great fidelity by Mr. Turrell, about a year before; and having been favoured by the proprietors with a few separate copies, I had sent them to some of my 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, with confidence, in this vocabulary, amounted to about 200; the number which had been immediately obtained from the pillar of Rosetta having been somewhat more than doubled by means of a careful examination of other monuments, on which the terms god, and king, and other epithets, already ascertained, were so applied as to furnish either certain or probable conclusions respecting the principal deities of the Egyptians, and respecting several of the latest and the most celebrated of their sovereigns. The higher numerals were readily obtained, by a comparison of some inscriptions, in which they stood combined with units and with tens. The hieratic manuscripts assisted also in this identification, by facilitating the determination of the hieroglyphic corresponding to a given enchorial character. The names of Phthah and of Apis were still left on the pillar: to these I was now enabled to add, with tolerable certainty, those of Ammon, or Jupiter, Phre, or the Sun, Rhea, or Urania, Ioh, or the Moon, Thoth, or Hermes, Osiris, Arueris, or Apollo, Isis, Nephthe, Buto, Horus, and Mneuis; besides a multitude of others, to whom I found it convenient to appropriate fictitious or temporary appellations, for the greater convenience of reference. Thus I have called Cerexochus, a figure whose real name was perhaps Amonrasonther, and my Hyperion and Platypterus are supposed by Mr. Champollion to belong to Horus and to Hercules. Of the kings, I have ascertained, as far as the testimony of the Greek and Latin historians and inscriptions would enable me, the names of Mesphres, Memnon, Sesostris, Nechao, Psammis, and Amasis; and having obtained the distinction of Ptolemy Soter from the pillar, I afterwards determined, by its assistance, the name of his queen Berenice. The termination indicating the female sex was another important result of this comparison of various monuments.

I must acknowledge that my respect for the good sense and accomplishments of my Egyptian allies by no means became more profound as our acquaintance became more intimate: on the contrary, all that Juvenal, in a moment, as might have been supposed, of discontent, had held up to ridicule of their superstitions and their depravity, became, as it were, displayed before my eyes, as the details of their mythology became more intelligible. That Plato professed to have learned much during a long residence in Egypt I can easily believe: he may very probably have derived from thence some hints, that led to his own purer doctrines of the immortality of the soul, although he may have been tempted to exaggerate a little the other advantages of his travels in search of truth; but that Pythagoras ever professed to have acquired any solid knowledge from the Egyptians, appears to me to be very inconsistent with what we know of the history of this illustrious philosopher, speculative and visionary as some of his arithmetical metaphysics seem to have been. I shall enter into some further details of my conclusions, in the words which I have already employed in the article Egypt.

“By means of the knowledge of the hieroglyphical characters, which has been already obtained, we are fully competent to form a general idea of the nature of the inscriptions on the principal Egyptian monuments that are extant. Numerous as they are, there is scarcely one of them which we are not able to refer to the class either of sepulchral or of votive inscriptions; astronomical and chronological there seem to be none, since the numerical characters, which have been perfectly ascertained, have not yet been found to occur in such a form as they necessarily must have assumed in the records of this description: of a historical nature, we can only find the triumphal, which are often sufficiently distinguishable, but they may also always be referred to the votive; since whoever, related his own exploits thought it wisest to attribute the glory of them to some deity, and whoever recorded those of another was generally disposed to intermix divine honours with his panegyric. It has, indeed, been asserted, that the Egyptians were not in the habit of deifying any mortal persons; but the inscription of Rosetta is by no means the only one in which the sovereigns of Egypt are inserted in the number of its deities; the custom is observable in monuments of a much earlier age: indeed, in such a country, it might be considered as a kind of dilemma of degradation, whether it was most ridiculous to be made a divinity, or to be excluded from so plebeian an assemblage; but flattery is more prone to err by commission than by omission, and, consequently, we find the terms king and god very generally inseparable. The sepulchral inscriptions, from the attention that was paid in Egypt to the obsequies of the dead, appear, on the whole, to constitute the most considerable part of the Egyptian literature which remains, and they afford us, upon a comparative examination, some very remarkable peculiarities. The general tenor of all these inscriptions appears to be, as might be expected from the testimony of Herodotus, the identification of the deceased with the god Osiris, and probably, if a female, with Isis; and the subject of the most usual representations seems to be the reception of this new personage by the principal deities, to whom he now stands in a relation expressed in the respective inscriptions; the honour of an apotheosis, reserved by the ancient Romans for emperors, and by the modern for saints, having been apparently extended by the old Egyptians to private individuals of all descriptions[; as indeed appears to be partially hinted in the concluding line of the golden verses of the Pythagoreans]. It required an extensive comparison of these inscriptions to recognise their precise nature, since they seldom contain a name surrounded by a ring in its usual form: sometimes, however, as in the green sarcophagus of the British Museum, a distinct name is very often repeated, and preceded by that of Osiris; while, in most other instances, there is a certain combination of characters, bearing evident relation to the personage delineated, which occurs, after the symbols of Osiris, instead of the name; so that either the ring was simply omitted on this occasion, or a new and perhaps a mysterious name was employed, consisting frequently of the appellations of several distinct deities, and probably analogous to the real name[, which will, indeed, hereafter appear to have consisted not uncommonly of a similar combination]. That the characteristic phrase[, or group], so repeated, must have had some relation to the deceased, is proved by its scarcely ever being alike in any two monuments that have been compared, while almost every other part of the manuscripts and inscriptions are the same in many different instances, and some of them in almost all; and this same phrase maybe observed in Lord Mountnorris’s and Mr. Bankes’s manuscripts, placed over the head of the person who is brought up between the two goddesses, to make his appearance before the true Osiris, in his own person, and in his judicial capacity, with his counsellors about him, and the balance of justice before him.” ...

“The tablet of the last judgment, which is so well illustrated by the testimony of Diodorus concerning the funerals of the Egyptians, is found near the end of almost all the manuscripts upon papyrus, that are so frequently discovered in the coffins of the mummies, and among others in Lord Mountnorris’s hieratic manuscript, printed in the collection of the Egyptian Society. The great deity sits on the left, holding the hook and the whip or fan; his name and titles are generally placed over him; but this part of the present manuscript is a little injured. Before him is a kind of mace, supporting something like the skin of a leopard; then a female Cerberus, and on a shelf over her head, the tetrad of termini, which have been already distinguished by the names “Tetrarcha,” Anubis, Macedo, and “Hieracion,” each having had his appropriate denomination written over his head. Behind the Cerberis stands Thoth, with his style and tablet, having just begun to write. Over his head, in two columns, we find his name and titles, including his designation as a scribe. The balance follows, with a little baboon as a kind of genius, sitting on it. Under the beam stand “Cteristes” and “Hyperion” [supposed by Mr. Champollion to be Anubis and Horus], who are employed in adjusting the equipoise; but their names in this manuscript are omitted. The five columns over the balance are only remarkable as containing, in this instance, the characteristic phrase, or the name of the deceased, intermixed with other characters. Beyond the balance stands a female, holding the sceptre of Isis, who seems to be called Rhea, the wife of the Sun. She is looking back at the personage, who holds up his hand as a mark of respect, and who is identified as the deceased by the name simply placed over him, without any exordium. He is followed by a second goddess, who is also holding up her hands, in token of respect; and whose name looks like a personification of honour or glory, unless it is simply intended to signify “a divine priestess,” belonging to the order of the Pterophori, mentioned on the Rosetta stone. The forty two assessors, [noticed by Diodorus and by these manuscripts], are wanting in this tablet; and, in many other manuscripts their number is curtailed, to make room for other subjects; but, in several of those which are engraved in the Déscription de l’Egypte, they are all represented, sometimes as sitting figures, and sometimes standing as termini, with their feet united.”

“The principal part of the text of all these manuscripts appears to consist of a collection of hymns, or rather homages, to certain deities, generally expressed in the name of the deceased, with his title of Osiris, although the true Osiris is not excluded from the groups that are introduced. The upper part of each manuscript is occupied by a series of pictural tablets; under them are vertical columns of distinct hieroglyphics, or, in the epistolographic manuscripts, pages of the text, which are commonly divided into paragraphs, with a tablet at the head of each; the first words being constantly written with red ink, made of a kind of ochre, as the black is of a carbonaceous substance. The beginning of the manuscripts is seldom entire, being always at the outside of the roll; as the umbilicus of the Romans was synonymous with the end.” ...

“The coffins of the mummies, and the larger sarcophagi of stone, are generally covered with representations extremely similar to some of those which are found in the manuscripts. The judicial tablet is frequently delineated on the middle of the coffins; above it are Isis and Nephthe, at the sides, and apparently Rhea in the middle, with outspread wings. The space below is chiefly occupied by figures of twenty or thirty of the principal deities, to whom the deceased, in his mystical character, is doing homage; each of them being probably designated by the relationship in which he stands to the new representative of Osiris. In the sculptures, the figures are generally less numerous; the same deities are commonly represented as on the painted coffins, but without the repetition of the suppliant, and in an order subject to some little variation. The large sarcophagus of granite, in the British Museum, brought from Cairo, and formerly called the Lover’s Fountain, has the name of Apis, as a part of the characteristic denomination. This circumstance, at first sight, seemed to make it evident that it must have been intended to contain the mummy of an Apis, for which its magnitude renders it well calculated; but when the symbols of other deities were found in the mystic names upon various other monuments, this inference could no longer be considered as absolutely conclusive.” ...

“Of the triumphal monuments, the most magnificent are the obeliscs, which are reported by Pliny to have been dedicated to the Sun; and there is every reason to suppose, that the translation of one of these inscriptions, preserved by Ammianus Marcellinus, after Hermapion, contains a true representation of a part of its contents, more especially as ‘the mighty Apollo’ of Hermapion agrees completely with the hawk, the bull, and the arm, which usually occupy the beginning of each inscription. These symbols are generally followed by a number of pompous titles, not always very intimately connected with each other, and among them we often find that of ‘Lord of the asp bearing diadems,’ with some others, immediately preceding the name and parentage of the sovereign, who is the principal subject of the inscription. The obelisc at Heliopolis is without the bull; and the whole inscription may be supposed to have signified something of this kind.

“This apollinean trophy is consecrated to the honour of king ‘remesses,’ crowned with an asp bearing diadem; it is consecrated to the honour of the son of ‘heron,’ the ornament of his country, beloved by phthah, living for ever; it is consecrated to the honour of the revered and beneficient deity ‘remesses,’ great in glory, superior to his enemies; by the decree of an assembly, to the powerful and the flourishing, whose life shall be without end.”

“It is true, that some parts of this interpretation are in great measure conjectural; but none of it is altogether arbitrary, or unsupported by some probable analogy: and the spirit and tenor of the inscription is probably unimpaired by the alterations, which this approximation to the sense may unavoidably have introduced.

“Of the obeliscs, still in existence, there are perhaps about thirty, larger and smaller, which may be considered as genuine. Several others are decidedly spurious, having been chiefly sculptured at Rome, in imitation of the Egyptian style, but so negligently and unskilfully, as to have exhibited a striking difference even in the character of the workmanship. Such are the Pamphilian, in explanation of which the laborious Kircher has published a folio volume, and the Barberinian or Veranian: in both of these the emblems are put together in a manner wholly arbitrary; and when an attempt is made to imitate the appearance of a name, the characters are completely different at each repetition. The Sallustian obelisc has also been broken, and joined inaccurately, and some modern restitutions have been very awkwardly introduced, as becomes evident upon comparing with each other the figures of Kircher and of Zoëga. [A similar restitution has been rather better executed at one corner of the Lateran obelisc, as I observed in the course of a few weeks that I passed at Rome in the summer of 1821: the block of granite, which has been employed, still exhibits some words of a Latin inscription, turned upside down, but not effaced, although the hieroglyphics belonging to the place have been imitated with tolerable fidelity]. Another very celebrated monument, the Isiac table, which has been the subject of much profound discussion, and has given birth to many refined mythological speculations, is equally incapable of supporting a minute examination upon solid grounds; for the inscriptions neither bear any relation to the figures near which they are placed, nor form any connected sense of their own; and the whole is undoubtedly the work of a Roman sculptor, imitating only the general style and the separate delineations of the Egyptian tablets; as indeed some of the most learned and acute of our critical antiquaries had already asserted, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of several foreigners, of the highest reputation for their intimate acquaintance with the works of Greek and Roman art. We may hope, however, that in future these unprofitable discussions and disputes will become less and less frequent, and that our knowledge of the antiquities of Egypt will gain as much in the solidity and sufficiency of its evidence, as it may probably lose in its hypothetical symmetry and its imaginary extent; and while we allow every latitude to legitimate reasoning and cautious conjecture, in the search after historical truths, we must peremptorily exclude from our investigations an attachment to fanciful systems and presupposed analogies on the one hand, and a too implicit deference to traditional authority on the other.”

A few general remarks, that I had taken the liberty of sending out to Mr. William Bankes, for his assistance in his Egyptian researches, had been found of some utility in directing his attention to points of the most material importance for the promotion of the investigation: and even before the actual publication of the Supplement of the Encyclopaedia, I had received from Egypt a very agreeable confirmation of my opinions, in a letter addressed by Mr. Salt to Mr. William Hamilton, of which I shall here insert an extract.

“Cairo, 1st May, 1819.

“At Dakki in Nubia there is an inscription of the Ptolemies, over the principal entrance, that occupies a place evidently connected with the architecture; and on each side of this is a tablet of hieroglyphics, nearly similar one to the other. Now it struck me on the spot, that these, being nearly of the same length as the Greek tablet, might possibly contain a translation. I therefore referred to a letter in Mr. Bankes’s possession, containing some fifty explanations of hieroglyphics from Dr. Young, and was certainly gratified to find that in the oval [ring], conspicuous on each side, was the name of the “immortal Ptolemy”: and immediately afterwards the name of Hermes on one side, and of Isis on the other, to whom, by numerous Greek inscriptions, it is certain that the temple was dedicated. In following up this idea, I found, in other parts of the temple, the name of “Ptolemy“ without the “immortal,” over offering figures; and also those hieroglyphics which Dr. Young supposes to represent the names of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, as well as Hermes, over their respective figures, invariably, I may say, throughout the numerous representations on the walls....

H.S.”

Upon Mr. Bankes’s return to England, he had the kindness and liberality to allow me free access to the unequalled treasures of drawings and inscriptions, that he had accumulated and brought home; and I soon obtained a knowledge of several additional characters from the comparison of these valuable documents. The most useful of these was the symbol for BROTHER or SISTER, which appears to be the crook generally seen in the hands of Osiris, and which is closely imitated in the enchorial character that I had already ascertained. I found, also, that the emblem which I had taken for MOTHER could only be translated WIFE, as it was applied to Cleopatra with relation to her husband Ptolemy; and that a FATHER was denoted by a bird with an arm, as I had at first inferred from the pillar of Rosetta, though I afterwards abandoned the opinion, from supposing that I had found another emblem for Ptolemy Philopator. It happened, however, by mere accident, that the advantage which I derived from this source was much less considerable than might have been expected, both from its abundance and from its uncontaminated purity; but I had been rather disposed to defer the ultimate study of Mr. Bankes’s collections, till their publication should give me a free right to employ them in any manner that I might think proper. Some remarks, however, that occurred to me in consequence of looking them over, I incorporated in a little essay which I gave to Mr. Belzoni, and which makes the appendix to the second edition of his travels. I have here observed, in speaking of the reference of the supposed Jewish captives, exhibited in the catacomb of my “Psammis,” to the expeditions of Necho to Jerusalem, in the time of King Josiah and Jehoahaz, “that there are some difficulties in reconciling the name of Psammis with some other monuments, and in particular with a most important fragment of an enumeration of the kings of Egypt, discovered by Mr. Bankes, at Abydos. In this there are only two kings intervening between this Psammis and the Memnon of the ancients: so that, if Pliny is right in his account of this obelisc, the popular tradition respecting the colossus, supposed to represent Memnon, must be erroneous. This, indeed, it would not be difficult to admit, as very likely to have happened in the case of any popular tradition; but there is a still greater difficulty in the inscription found by Mr. Bankes on the leg of the colossus at Ebsambul, in which Psammetichus is mentioned; and if this was the first Psammetichus, as appears in some respects to be the more probable, it would follow that the king who founded that temple was more ancient than Psammetichus. But it is abundantly certain that our Psammis was prior to the founder of that temple: so that either that Psammetichus must be of much later date, as the employment of the Greek Ψ in the inscription would indeed appear to indicate, or this catacomb was not constructed in honour of the son of Pharaoh Necho. It has also been observed by an accomplished scholar, who is much attached to the pursuit of Egyptian antiquities, that, according to the testimony of Herodotus, all the kings of this dynasty were buried at Saïs, and that we must either reject this evidence, or admit that neither Psammis nor Necho can be the personage here represented. We may, however, hope, that future researches will furnish us with materials, that may enable us to remove this and many other difficulties, which at present envelope the chronology of the kings of Egypt.”

CHAPTER IV
COLLECTIONS OF THE FRENCH. MR. DROVETTI. MR. CHAMPOLLION’S DISCOVERIES.

Although the discovery of the general import of the hieroglyphics has by no means excited any great sensation in this country, yet the activity of the various collectors resident in Egypt seems to have been in some measure stimulated by it. Important additions have been made, or are about to be made, to the Egyptian department of the British Museum; and in France, the magnificent liberality of the Government, together with the insatiable curiosity of some affluent individuals, has held out ample encouragement to the commercial antiquarian.

I thought myself extremely fortunate, in my return from the short excursion to Rome and Naples, that I made in the autumn of 1821, to have discovered at Leghorn, among a multitude of Egyptian antiquities, belonging to Mr. Drovetti, the French consul at Alexandria, which had long lain warehoused there, a stone containing an enchorial and a Greek inscription, which was known to have existed formerly at Menouf, but which had been lost and almost forgotten by European travellers in Egypt, and I believe by Mr. Drovetti himself; for I am informed that it is not mentioned in the catalogue of his Museum, which has been sent to Paris and elsewhere. Although both the inscriptions appeared to be almost illegible, yet I did not despair of being able, in a proper light, and with sufficient patience, to decipher the greater part; and I should have been tempted to remain a few days at Leghorn, in order to make the experiment, if I could have obtained permission from the merchants, to whose care the collection was entrusted. The more, however, that I considered the importance of the only supplement to the pillar of Rosetta, that then appeared to be in existence, the more anxiety I felt to make some effort, to secure it from oblivion or destruction; and with more simplicity, perhaps, than good policy, when I returned to Pisa in the evening, I wrote a letter to MM. Mompurgo, of which I shall here insert a translation.

“Gentlemen,

“Having fully reflected on the singular importance of the Greek inscription, which I mentioned to you this morning, and the irreparable misfortune that would be incurred, in case that the pillar containing it should ever be lost by shipwreck, I have determined to make you a proposal, which I hope you will not find any impropriety in accepting.

“I am very desirous of sending an experienced artist from Florence, in order to make two impressions in plaster, and two tracings on paper, of this stone; upon condition, that they be considered as the property of Mr. Drovetti, and remain in your possession, until you have received his answer to the inquiry, whether he will permit them to be sent to London, either for myself or for the British Museum, and what price he would expect to receive for them. And in case that he should not think proper to fix such a price on them, as we might agree to pay, I am willing to consent, that they should remain in his collection, upon condition, however, that if this collection should ever be reembarked, for conveyance by sea, they should be kept at Leghorn, until the original stone should have arrived safely at the place of its destination, in order to avoid the chance of wholly losing this literary treasure by shipwreck.

“Whatever may be Mr. Drovetti’s decision, I trust that this application, from one who flatters himself that he is the only person living, that can fully appreciate the value of the object in question, will at least not be disagreeable to him. I will beg of you to send me an early answer, directed to Schneiderff’s Hotel at Florence.

T. Y. Sec. R. S. Lond.

Pisa, 5th Sept. 1821.”

MM. Mompurgo readily agreed to my proposal, and I engaged a distinguished artist of Florence to undertake the performance of my plan; but I believe he was accidentally prevented from fulfilling his engagement. It appears, however, that his labour, as far as I was concerned, would have been wholly lost; for Mr. Drovetti’s cupidity seems to have been roused by the discovery of an unknown treasure, and he has given me to understand, that nothing should induce him to separate it from the remainder of his extensive and truly valuable collection, of which he thinks it so well calculated to enhance the price; and he refuses to allow any kind of copy of it to be taken.

But, as it often happens to those who are too eager to monopolize, he has now outstood his market, and the pearl of great price, which six months ago I would have purchased for much more than its value, is now become scarcely worth my acceptance. I was principally anxious to obtain from it a collateral confirmation of my interpretation of the enchorial inscription of Rosetta; but having fortunately acquired materials, from other sources, which are amply sufficient for this purpose, I can wait, with great patience, for any little extension, which my enchorial vocabulary might receive from this source. I had inferred from a note, that had been sent me several years before, respecting the stone of Menouf, by Mr. Jomard, that the first words of the Greek inscription must have been ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙ ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΩΙ ΝΕΩΙ ΔΙΟΝΥΣΩΙ, but this was all that the gentleman, who described it, had even attempted to copy.

The first circumstance, that repressed my eagerness to obtain a copy of Drovetti’s inscriptions, was the arrival of Mr. Casati at Paris, with a parcel of manuscripts, among which Mr. Champollion discovered one that considerably resembled, in its preamble, the enchorial text of the pillar of Rosetta: and the value of this discovery was afterwards almost miraculously multiplied, by the existence of a Greek translation of the same manuscript, which has been brought to London by Mr. Grey.

Having had occasion, in the month of September last, to accompany some friends in a short visit to Paris, I was very agreeably surprised with several literary and scientific novelties of uncommon interest, and all of them such as either had originated, or might have originated, from my own pursuits. I had first the pleasure of hearing, at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, an optical paper read by Mr. Fresnel; who, though he appears to have rediscovered, by his own efforts, the laws of the interference of light, and though he has applied them, by some very refined calculations, to cases which I had almost despaired of being able to explain by them, has, on all occasions, and particularly in a very luminous statement of the theory, lately inserted in a translation of Thomson’s Chemistry, acknowledged, with the most scrupulous justice, and the most liberal candour, the indisputable priority of my investigations. In the course of the same week, I was invited to sit next to Mr. Champollion junior, while he was reading, to the Academy of Belles Lettres, a Memoir on the Analysis of the Inscription of Rosetta: he, also, had been partly anticipated in his results by what had been done in this country: though I could not help fancying, that he had not so completely forgiven the injury, as his countryman Mr. Fresnel appeared to have done. But Mr. Fresnel is the friend of Arago, and nothing more requires to be said of his character and sentiments.

I must, however, at once beg to be understood, that I fully and sincerely acquit Mr. Champollion of any intentions actually dishonourable: and if I have hinted, that I have received an impression of something like a want of liberality in his conduct, I have only thrown out this intimation, as an apology for being obliged to plead my own cause, and not as having any right to complain of his silence, or as having any desire or occasion to profit by his indulgence: at the same time I am far from wishing to renounce his friendship, or to forego the pleasure and advantage of his future correspondence.

At the beginning of my Egyptian researches, I had accidentally received a letter from Mr. Champollion, which accompanied a copy of his work on the state of Egypt under the Pharaohs, sent as a present to the Royal Society: and as he requested some particular information respecting several parts of the enchorial inscription of Rosetta, which were imperfectly represented in the engraved copies, I readily answered his inquiries from a reference to the original monument in the British Museum: and a short time afterwards I sent him a copy of my conjectural translation of the inscriptions, as it was inserted in the Archaeologia.

Of Mr. Champollion’s Egypte sous les Pharaons, the two volumes, that have hitherto appeared, relate only to the geography of ancient Egypt, and especially to the determination of the old Egyptian names of places, as compared with the Greek and the Arabic, by the assistance of Coptic manuscripts, and other intermediate documents. The work exhibits considerable research, and some ingenuity: the author had devoted his life to one very extensive pursuit, and he proposed to illustrate every part of his subject, by the most minute investigation of every circumstance, that could be brought to bear upon it. The undertaking, commenced on so large a scale, appears to have proceeded but slowly; nor is it probable that the life of any man would be sufficient for its complete execution.

With regard to the enchorial Inscription, Mr. Champollion appeared to me to have done at that time but little. A few of the references, that he made to it, seemed to depend entirely upon Mr. Akerblad’s investigations, although, as I have formerly had occasion to remark, it was tacitly that he adopted Mr. Akerblad’s conclusions. I imagine, however, that he even now retains some erroneous prepossessions, which he had imbibed from Mr. Akerblad, although, very possibly, without recollecting their exact origin; in particular respecting the adoption of some Greek epithets, without translation, into the enchorial inscription: this question, however, I trust is now set at rest, by means of some later discoveries.

Mr. Champollion continued to reside at Grenoble, where he had some employment in the public library, till the beginning of 1821. I had not a convenient opportunity of sending him any of my later papers; and it was not till after he had left Grenoble, that he read the Article Egypt of the Supplement of the Encyclopaedia, into which their contents were condensed. He had been devoting himself, in the mean time, to the uninterrupted study of the enchorial inscription, and he appears to have discovered, before he came to Paris, the original identity of these characters with the imperfect imitations of the more distinct hieroglyphics. Whether he made this discovery before I had printed my letters in the Museum Criticum, I have no means of ascertaining: I have never asked him the question, nor is it of much consequence, either to the world at large or to ourselves. It may not be strictly just, to say, that a man has no right to claim any discovery as his own, till he has printed and published it: but the rule is at least a very useful one. It is always easy to publish such an account of a discovery, as to establish the right of originality, without affording much facility to the pursuits of a competitor: although it is generally true, that not only honesty, but even liberality, is the best policy.

Passing by, however, what I had already done, by far the most important to me was what I had not done, and there was enough of this to satisfy me, that Mr. Champollion was at least capable of doing many things, with respect to which his claim of actual priority might appear more than doubtful.

He had found, in the first place, among the multitude of Egyptian papyri, which he had taken the trouble to copy at length, with the permission of their various possessors, one in particular, of which a series of the chapters were pretty obviously numbered in the enchorial character, the series extending, with a few interruptions, from 1 to 20. He had already applied this discovery to the illustration of some parts of the pillar of Rosetta: and I have since derived at least equal advantage from it, in the examination of the enchorial papyrus of Casati.

He had also discovered a fragment of a pillar formerly in the possession of the Duc de Choiseul, which exhibited the character for a month, followed by several various groups, together with different numbers, evidently indicative of days; so that to the names of the three months, which I had discovered, he was enabled to add at least four more, though without completely ascertaining to which of the months these new symbols belonged.

Mr. Champollion had ascertained, in the third place, the analogy of one of the manuscripts, purchased of Casati, to the enchorial inscription of Rosetta, and he had obtained from it, without difficulty, the mode of writing the name Cleopatra in that character. He did not, however, then mention to me the important consequences which he had derived from this discovery; these, it seems, were the subject of a short paper read to the Academy the succeeding Friday; and it will be proper to extract a more particular account of them, from his Letter to Mr. Dacier, since printed; in which I did certainly expect to find the chronology of my own researches a little mere distinctly stated.

“The hieroglyphical text of the inscription of Rosetta,” he observes, (p. 6), “exhibited, on account of its fractures, only the name of Ptolemy. The obelisc found in the Isle of Philae, and lately removed to London, contains also the hieroglyphical name of one of the Ptolemies, expressed by the same characters that occur in the inscription of Rosetta, surrounded by a ring or border, and it is followed by a second border, which must necessarily contain the proper name of a woman, and of a queen of the family of the Lagidae, since this group is terminated by the hieroglyphics expressive of the feminine gender; characters which are found at the end of the names of all the Egyptian goddesses without exception. The obelisc was fixed, it is said, to a basis bearing a Greek inscription, which is a petition of the priests of Isis at Philae, addressed to King Ptolemy, to Cleopatra his sister, and to Cleopatra his wife. Now, if this obelisc, and the hieroglyphical inscription engraved on it, were the result of this petition, which in fact adverts to the consecration of a monument of the kind, the border, with the feminine proper name, can only be that of one of the Cleopatras. This name, and that of Ptolemy, which in the Greek have several letters in common, were capable of being employed for a comparison of the hieroglyphical characters composing them; and if the similar characters in these names expressed in both the same sounds, it followed that their nature must be entirely phonetic.”

This course of investigation appears, indeed, to be so simple and so natural, that the reader must naturally be inclined to forget that any preliminary steps were required: and to take it for granted, either that it had long been known and admitted, that the rings on the pillar of Rosetta contained the name of Ptolemy, and that the semicircle and the oval constituted the female termination, or that Mr. Champollion himself had been the author of these discoveries.

It had, however, been one of the greatest difficulties attending the translation of the hieroglyphics of Rosetta, to explain how the groups within the rings, which varied considerably in different parts of the pillar, and which occurred in several places where there was no corresponding name in the Greek, while they were not to be found in others where they ought to have appeared, could possibly represent the name of Ptolemy; and it was not without considerable labour that I had been able to overcome this difficulty. The interpretation of the female termination had never, I believe, been suspected by any but myself: nor had the name of a single god or goddess, out of more than five hundred that I have collected, been clearly pointed out by any person.

But, however Mr. Champollion may have arrived at his conclusions, I admit them, with the greatest pleasure and gratitude, not by any means as superseding my system, but as fully confirming and extending it. And here I am compelled to advert to a note of Mr. Champollion’s, which I fear will be thought to go a little beyond a tacit adoption of my opinions, and to approach very near to an unintentional misrepresentation. “It must, without doubt, (p. 15,) have been by the form of this symbol, which has some resemblance to the figure of a basket, that Dr. Young was led to recognise the name of Berenice in the border that actually contains it. But he was of opinion that the hieroglyphics constituting proper names were employed as expressing whole syllables, that they were therefore a sort of rebuses, and that the first character of the name of Berenice, for example, represented the syllable BIR, which means a basket in the Egyptian language. This mistaken supposition has vitiated, in great measure, the phonetic analysis which he has attempted of the names of Ptolemy and Berenice, in which, notwithstanding, he has recognised the phonetic values of four of the characters: these are the P, one of the forms of the T, one of the forms of the M, and the I; but the whole of his syllabic alphabet, established from these two names only, was completely inapplicable to the great number of proper names phonetically expressed on the various monuments of Egypt ... Encyclopaedia Britannica, Supplement, IV. Pt. i. Edinb. Dec. 1819.”

Now, if Mr. Champollion had attended to my expressions, he must have perceived that it was not by any resemblance of an imaginary nature that I was “led to recognise the name of Berenice;” but by external evidence only. “The appellation Soteres,” I have observed, Art. 57, “as a dual, is well marked in the inscription of Rosetta, and the character, thus determined, explains a long name in the temple at Edfou ... 58. The wife of Ptolemy Soter, and mother of Philadelphus, was Berenice, whose name is found on a ceiling at Karnak, in the phrase, “Ptolemy and ... Berenice, the saviour gods.” In this name we appear to have another specimen of syllabic and alphabetical writing combined, in a manner not extremely unlike the ludicrous mixtures of words and things with which children are sometimes amused; for however Warburton’s indignation might be excited by such a comparison, it is perfectly true that, occasionally, “the sublime differs from the ridiculous by a single step only.”... I have then proceeded to state, as conjectural inferences, the syllabic analogies: but instead of four letters which Mr. Champollion is pleased to allow me, I have marked, in a subsequent chapter of this Essay, nine, which I have actually specified in different parts of my paper in the Supplement: and to these he has certainly added three new ones; or four, if he chooses to reckon the E as a fourth. I allow that I suspected the B, the L, and the S, to be sometimes used syllabically: but the analogy of these characters with the enchorial alphabet was so well marked, that my attempt to refine upon it could not easily have embarrassed any one in making the application. Mr. Champollion has never been led, in any one instance, from the Egyptian name of an object, to infer the phonetic interpretation, that is, the alphabetical power of its symbol: but the letters having once been ascertained, he has ransacked his memory or his dictionary for some name that he thought capable of being applied to the symbol: and not always, as it appears to me, in the most natural manner: I should prefer, for instance, the word HRERI, a flower, as making the R, to the name of pomegranate, which, it seems, was sometimes called ROMAN or ERMAN. I must also observe that my intention, in placing the Coptic names in my vocabulary of hieroglyphics, was to assist in tracing any such analogies that might suggest themselves: and in the instance of AM or EM, N. 123, the reading approaches very near to one of the letters, added by Mr. Champollion to my alphabet.

With respect to the diversity of characters representing the same letter, it will be observed that I have marked three forms of the M, three of the N, with a fourth that was suggested to me by Mr. Bankes, two of the P or PH, and two of the S. Of these last, I cannot omit to observe, that Mr. Champollion has devoted at least a page of his letter (p. 13, 14) to the demonstration of the identity of these same forms: and that it would not have been unnatural to refer, in a single line of that page, to the assertion of the same identity, which I had made in the article Egypt, No. 102. “The bent line is often exchanged in the manuscripts for the divided staff, and both are represented in the running hand by a figure like a 9 or a 4.” The remainder of the forms, assigned to the letters, are all due to Mr. Champollion’s ingenious and successful investigations.

It so happens, that in the lithographical sketch of the obelisc of Philae, which had been put into my hands by its adventurous and liberal possessor, the artist has expressed the first letter of the name of Cleopatra by a T instead of a K, and as I had not leisure at the time to enter into a very minute comparison of the name with other authorities, I suffered myself to be discouraged with respect to the application of my alphabet to its analysis, and contented myself with observing, that if the steps of the formation of an alphabet were not exactly such as I had pointed out, they must at least have been very nearly of the same nature. In return, I was complimented for my candour, while I ought, perhaps, to have been reproved for my timidity. If, however, I may judge from my late correspondence with Mr. Champollion, he does not appear to be altogether so averse to the admission of syllabic characters on some occasions, as his note upon my “false point of departure” appears to imply: and I think he will find, in the evidence now first made public, respecting the enchorial character, some additional grounds for enforcing the opinion. I shall insert a specimen of one variety of each of the names which he has succeeded in deciphering: observing only, that his alphabet could scarcely have agreed so well with the various combinations of these names, as it appears to do, if it had not been in great measure correct: and that I also fully agree with Mr. Champollion in his interpretation of the phrase of the Pamfilian obelisc, which he translates, who has received the kingdom from Vespasian his father: the same phrase occurring on the pillar of Rosetta, as well as on the obelisc of Philae, where it had served to correct my later opinion respecting the symbol for FATHER. It is here evident that the expression cannot relate, as Mr. St. Martin imagines it must have done in the inscriptions of Rosetta, to the immediate installation of a son by the hands of his father; but that the right of inheritance only was implied by it. I am not however convinced, by the coherence of this passage, that the greater part of the obelisc was ever intended by the sculptor to convey a connected meaning; and at any rate the explanation confirms the opinion, that I had expressed, respecting the Roman origin of the workmanship. There are a few of the busts, now placed in the magical gallery of the Vatican, which appeared to me, on the contrary, to have been brought from Egypt with their genuine and ancient inscriptions, and to have had their features newly formed, and more highly polished, by Roman artists of the age of Adrian, in whose villa at Tivoli they were principally found.

Mr. Champollion has lately had the goodness to communicate to me, by letter, some suggestions, which, I conclude, he is on the point of making public, and I therefore take the liberty of mentioning them, as far as I think them at all admissible, though, perhaps, a little prematurely. He is disposed to refer the name, which I consider as that of the father of Amasis, to Sesostris, as synonymous with Ramesses, which he thinks the characters are probably intended to express phonetically. Now I readily allow, that where this name is written fully and accurately, as it is repeatedly found in Mr. Bankes’s great catalogue of Abydos, it may without much violence be read nearly as Mr. Champollion proposes, “the approved by Phthah, Ramesses,” or “the counterpart of Phthah, Ramesses;” the first part of the group undergoing several synonymous variations, while the end remains unchanged; although, if this reading were established, I should refer the first name to Amenophis or Memnon, who was the son of Ramesses, or of Armesses called Miamun; and to whom the tomb of my Amasis is said to be attributed in the Greek and Latin inscriptions which are found in it; who is also said to have built the palace of Abydos, on which my Amasis evidently appears as the founder; who is more easily understood than Amasis to be prior to the Psammetichus mentioned at Ebsambul; and, who is more likely than Amasis to have been at Berýtus, or Nahr el Kelb, where Mr. Wyse, as I am informed by Sir William Gell, has distinctly observed this name, accompanied by the nail-headed characters. All these reasons are more than sufficient to counterbalance the single assertion of Pliny; and we should be obliged to change my Psammis, according to his place in Mr. Bankes’s table of kings, into the Armais of Manetho; though the vocal Memnon of the numerous inscriptions would be converted by this comparison into Queen Rathotis, or we should be obliged to leave out three of Manetho’s list, to bring him up to the Amenophis who is called the Trojan Memnon by that author. All this is, indeed, a little alluring, and several suppositions might be introduced to overcome the difficulties: but unfortunately the fundamental supposition appears to be liable to an insurmountable objection; that the circle, which Mr. Champollion considers as equivalent to the RE or RA of Ramesses, is also the first character of each of the seventeen names immediately preceding it, and indeed of every other in the catalogue, that remains unmutilated at the beginning.

I am therefore sorry to say that I cannot hitherto congratulate Mr. Champollion on the success of his attempts to carry his system of phonetic characters into the very remotest antiquity of Egypt: he appears, however, to have a better prospect of elucidating some of the Persian names, having, as he informs me, been able to identify that of Xerxes, both in the hieroglyphics, and in the nail-headed characters, by means of a vase of alabaster, on which both are found together. This is, indeed, a wonderful opening for literary enterprise; and I am even inclined to hope, from Mr. Champollion’s latest communications, that he will find some means of overcoming the difficulties that I have stated respecting the Pharaohs, for he assures me, that he has identified the names of no less than THIRTY of them, and that they accord with the traditions of Manetho, and, as far as he can judge, with the notes that I had sent him of an attempt that I had formerly made to assign temporary names to the kings enumerated at Abydos, in which those of all the later ones began with the syllable RE. He will easily believe that I wish for a satisfactory answer to my own objections: and, in fact, the further that he advances by the exertion of his own talents and ingenuity, the more easily he will be able to admit, without any exorbitant sacrifice of his fame, the claim that I have advanced to a priority with respect to the first elements of all his researches; and I cannot help thinking that he will ultimately feel it most for his own substantial honour and reputation, to be more anxious to admit the just claims of others than they can be to advance them.

CHAPTER V.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE MANUSCRIPTS BROUGHT FROM EGYPT BY MR. GREY.

I am impatient to turn, from every thing of a polemical or personal nature, to a field that has hitherto been exclusively in my own possession, in consequence of an event, which is the most important, considered as a single occurrence, that has taken place since the commencement of my Egyptian researches. It was very soon after my return from France, that George Francis Grey, Esq. of University College, Oxford, having been at Naples upon his return from Egypt, was so good as to bring me a few lines from my old friend Sir William Gell, himself a very successful traveller, and who has always pursued with ardour the last vestiges of the interesting remains of antiquity, both by his personal exertions, and by assisting and directing the enterprises of others.

Mr. Grey had the kindness, on the 22d of November last, to leave with me a box, containing several fine specimens of writing and drawing on papyrus; they were chiefly in hieroglyphics, and of a mythological nature: but the two which he had before described to me, as particularly deserving attention, and which were brought, through his judicious precautions, in excellent preservation, both contained some Greek characters, written apparently in a pretty legible hand. He had purchased them of an Arab at Thebes, in January 1820; and that which was most intelligible had appeared, at first sight, to contain some words relating to the service of the Christian church. Mr. Grey was so good as to give me leave to make any use of these manuscripts that I pleased; and he readily consented to their insertion among the lithographic copies of the “Hieroglyphics, collected by the Egyptian Society,” which I had undertaken to superintend from time to time, in great measure for the private use of an association of my own friends, not sufficiently numerous to insure any permanent stability to its continuance.

Mr. Champollion had done me the favour, while I was at Paris, to copy for me some parts of the very important papyrus, which I have before mentioned as having given him the name of Cleopatra; and of which the discovery was certainly a great event in Egyptian literature, since it was the first time that any intelligible characters, of the enchorial form, had been discovered among the many manuscripts and inscriptions that had been examined, and since it furnished Mr. Champollion at the same time with a name, which materially advanced, if I understood him rightly, the steps that have led him to his very important extension of the hieroglyphical alphabet. He had mentioned to me, in conversation, the names of Apollonius, “Antiochus,” and Antigonus, as occurring among the witnesses; and I easily recognised the groups which he had deciphered: although, instead of Antiochus, I read Antimachus; and I did not recollect at the time that he had omitted the M.

In the evening of the day that Mr. Grey had brought me his manuscripts, I proceeded impatiently to examine that which was in Greek only: and I could scarcely believe that I was awake, and in my sober senses, when I observed, among the names of the witnesses, ANTIMACHUS ANTIGENIS: and, a few lines further back, PORTIS APOLLONII; although the last word could not have been very easily deciphered, without the assistance of the conjecture, which immediately occurred to me, that this manuscript might perhaps be a translation of the enchorial manuscript of Casati: I found that its beginning was, “A copy of an Egyptian writing ...;” and I proceeded to ascertain, that there were the same number of names, intervening between the Greek, and the Egyptian signatures, that I had identified, and that the same number followed the last of them; and the whole number of witnesses appeared to be sixteen in each. The last paragraph in the Greek began with the words, “Copy of the Registry;” for such must be the signification of the word ΠΤΩΜΑΤΟΣ, employed in this papyrus, though it does not appear to occur any where else in a similar signification. I could not, therefore, but conclude, that a most extraordinary chance had brought into my possession a document which was not very likely, in the first place, ever to have existed, still less to have been preserved uninjured, for my information, through a period of near two thousand years: but that this very extraordinary translation should have been brought safely to Europe, to England, and to me, at the very moment when it was most of all desirable to me to possess it, as the illustration of an original which I was then studying, but without any other reasonable hope of being able fully to comprehend it; this combination would, in other times, have been considered as affording ample evidence of my having become an Egyptian sorcerer.

Mr. Champollion had not thought it worth while to give me a transcript of the original Greek endorsement: he seemed to consider it as not fully agreeing with the Egyptian text, or, at any rate, as not materially assisting in its interpretation: perhaps, also, he thought it best for me to try my strength upon the original, without any little assistance that might have been derived from it with respect to two or three of the names: or, as I am more disposed to believe, he was fearful of offending some of his countrymen, by making too public what he had no right to communicate without their leave: for after an accidental delay of a month, the answer that I received from Paris was only such as to enable me to state, that my opinion of the identity of the two endorsements is fully confirmed. I have lost, however, no time in sending to the Conservators of the King’s cabinet a copy of my registry; with a request to be favoured with theirs in return, in order that I might have the same advantage from the comparison, which I voluntarily afforded the Parisian critics, without any reserve or delay; and in order that the duplicates may stand side by side in the lithographical copy, which has only waited for their answer, to have a vacant space filled up, and to be sent to them entire. In the mean time, I have only to wish, that the philologists of Paris may do as ample justice to these papyri, as one of the most distinguished of their number, Mr. Letronne, has lately done to the inscriptions of the Oasis, of which I had made a very hasty translation from a single copy only, not having had the means of comparing it properly with the second.

My application for the copy of the Registry has been received with the liberality which was to be expected from the directors of a great institution, and I have to return my best thanks to Mr. Raoul Rochette, for a correct copy of the whole of this highly important manuscript, which I am happy to find that it is his intention to publish in a short time. I am most anxious to avoid anticipating him, in the gratification of the public curiosity, with regard to this interesting relic: but as I find that some account of the Registry has already been made public by Mr. St. Martin, I conceive myself at liberty to make use, at least, of this part of the manuscript: and I do not imagine that Mr. Raoul Rochette means to employ himself on the enchorial conveyance.

The contents of Mr. Grey’s Greek manuscript are of a nature scarcely less remarkable than its preservation and discovery: it relates to the sale, not of a house or a field, but of a portion of the Collections and Offerings made from time to time on account, or for the benefit, of a certain number of Mummies, of persons described at length, in very bad Greek, with their children and all their households. The price is not very clearly expressed; but as the portion sold is only a moiety of a third part of the whole, and as the testimony of sixteen witnesses was thought necessary on the occasion, it is probable that the revenue, thus obtained by the priests, was by no means inconsiderable.

The result, derived at once from this comparison, is the identification of more than thirty proper names as they were written in the running hand of the country. It might appear, upon a superficial consideration, that a mere catalogue of proper names would be of little comparative value in assisting us to recover the lost elements of a language. But, in fact, they possess a considerable advantage, in the early stages of such an investigation, from the greater facility and certainty with which they are identified, and from their independence of any grammatical inflexions, at least in the present case; by means of which they lead us immediately to a full understanding of the orthographical system of the language, where any such system can be traced.

The general inference, to be derived from an examination of the names now discovered, is somewhat more in favour of an extensive employment of an alphabetical mode of writing, than any that could have been deduced from the pillar of Rosetta, which exhibits, indeed, only foreign names, and affords us therefore little or no information respecting the mode of writing the original Egyptian names of the inhabitants. Several of the words, which occur in these documents, and more especially in those which are hereafter to be mentioned, might be read pretty correctly, by means of the alphabet originally made out by Mr. Akerblad from the foreign names of the enchorial inscription; but there are many more which appear to be rather syllabically than alphabetically constituted: and the names of the different deities seem to be very commonly employed in writing them; for instance, those of Horus, Ammon, and Isis; and perhaps in the same way that they are often composed, in the mythological manuscripts, found with the mummies: in which, for want of the occurrence of a ring or border, or of the corresponding enchorial marks, I had concluded that the groups could not be intended to represent the ordinary names of the individuals. But these marks are, in fact, by no means constantly employed in the enchorial papyri; and they seem only to have been inserted when either great precision, or some distinguished mark of respect was required.

Important, however, as are the additions that are likely to be made to our knowledge by means of this “Antigraph”, it is by no means the only valuable acquisition for which we are indebted to the enterprise and the diligence of Mr. Grey: a second papyrus, of considerably greater magnitude, contains three Egyptian conveyances in the enchorial character, with separate registries on the margin, in very legible Greek. These are not only of use for the illustration of other similar documents, but they afford us also many additional examples of enchorial proper names, besides a general idea of the subjects of the respective manuscripts, all of which relate to the sale of lands in the neighbourhood of Thebes. It will be most convenient to consider them as parts of a series, of which those are the first to be examined, that are the most capable of affording an independent testimony; beginning with the Greek papyrus in the possession of Mr. Anastasy, the Swedish consul at Alexandria, and proceeding to the Antigraph and its original, and thence to the three enchorial manuscripts, which are also the property of Mr. Grey. It is scarcely conceivable, by a person who has not made the experiment; how much the difficulty of reading a depraved character is almost universally diminished by the comparison of two or three copies of the same or of similar passages; the words, which would be wholly unintelligible in either taken singly, being often very easily legible when both are at once under the eye; and, still more commonly, a word which is confused or contracted in one, being written clearly or at length in another.

It is in this manner, that several of the deficiencies of the manuscript of Anastasy, as edited by the learned and ingenious Professor Böckh of Berlin, have been in some measure supplied, in the late republication at Paris, by the care of Mr. Jomard, from a comparison with the Greek manuscripts purchased of Mr. Casati, in order to be added to the unrivalled treasures of literature contained in the King’s library and cabinet. Several more of the obscurities of this manuscript, if not the whole, I flatter myself are now removed, by the further comparison, which I have attempted to make, by means of Mr. Grey’s indulgence in allowing me the use of his manuscripts; and by means of the duplicate which I have received from Paris in exchange for the registry of his Antigraph.

The manuscript of Anastasy, besides its curiosity as a subject of antiquarian and historical research, becomes of great importance, in this inquiry, as affording a more complete specimen, than the Antigraph, of the usual form of a contract in Egypt under the Ptolemies; and as assisting in the investigation of the sense of the preamble of the enchorial manuscript, which is omitted in the Antigraph. I shall therefore insert here a translation of this document, and shall reprint the original in an appendix, with such corrections as I have thought it appeared to require; in order to restore it to the form intended by the writer. The registries, in their original language, I shall print side by side, and in the order of time which I attribute to them.