OF all the splendid achievements of archæological research during the present century, there are none of more universal interest and importance than those which are revealing the origin and history of letters; this, not alone for the historic values of these discoveries, for their illumination of a past of which hitherto there was but a faint conception; but also for what letters have to tell us in explanation or confirmation of Biblical narrative, of their bearing upon our most sacred beliefs.
At the beginning of the present century the great mass of testimony now laid open before us was an apparently impenetrable mystery. Egyptian hieroglyphics and cuneiform inscriptions yet remained, for the most part, but confusion of ornament and meaningless signs. Some little advance, it is true, had been reached during the latter part of the eighteenth century, as to the signification of certain hieroglyphic characters, but these were as yet but conjecture; a groping in the dark, with no means to verify, uncertain, unassured.
With the opening of the present century two events occurred which were to place in the hands of scholars the keys to these mysteries. The first in date of these discoveries, though not in results, was the finding of the Rosetta Stone in 1799.
This was an outcome of the French scientific expedition to Egypt under the first Napoleon. At this date, a French artillery officer, named Boussard, while digging among some ruins at Fort St. Julian, near Rosetta, discovered a large stone, of black basalt, covered with inscriptions. This tablet, now known as “The Rosetta Stone,” was of irregular shape, portions having been broken from the top and sides. The inscriptions were in three kinds of writing; the upper text in hieroglyphic characters, the second in a later form of Egyptian writing, called enchorial or demotic, and the third was in Greek. No one of these had been entirely preserved. Of the hieroglyphic text, a considerable portion was lacking; perhaps thirteen or fourteen lines at the beginning. From the demotic, the ends of about half the lines were lost, while the Greek text was nearly perfect, with the exception of a few words at the end.
The immediate inferences were that these three inscriptions were but different forms of the same decree, and that in the Greek would be found some clew for the decipherment of the others. It was first presented to the French Institute at Cairo where it was destined not long to remain.
The surrender of Alexandria to the British, in 1801, placed the Rosetta Stone, by the terms of the treaty, in the hands of the British Commissioner. This gentleman, himself a zealous scholar and keenly alive to the importance of the treasure, at once dispatched it to England, where it was presented by George III to the British Museum.
A fac simile of the inscriptions was made in 1802, by the “Society of Antiquaries,” of London, and copies were soon distributed among the scholars of Europe. When the Greek inscription was read, it was found to be a decree by the priests of Memphis in honor of King Ptolemy Epiphanes; B. C. 198;
That, in acknowledgment of many and great benefits conferred upon them by this king, they had ordered this decree should be engraved upon a tablet of hard stone in hieroglyphic, enchorial and Greek characters; the first, the writing sacred to the priests; the second, the language or script of the people, and the third that of the Greeks, their rulers.
Also, that this decree, so engraved, should be set up in the temples of the first, second and third orders, near the image of the ever living King.