Richard Lepsius, a biography

by Georg Ebers

The treatises on language written by Lepsius were all published in the transactions and monthly reports of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and the greater number of them have been already cited.

Up to the year 1866 he remained in Berlin, occupied with ceaseless labors, and only in the autumn holidays did he undertake long journeys for recreation or in pursuit of his scientific aims. Several times he went to London, especially on account of affairs relating to his standard alphabet. He was always attracted towards Paris, and once went there (1857) on a commission from the government to bid at an auction of Egyptian antiquities for the Berlin museum. He also reaped a fresh scientific harvest in the year 1852, during a second and longer visit to the museum at Leyden, where he was most cordially received by the Leemans and the mother of the excellent Director.

In the beginning of 1866, he undertook his second journey to Egypt, and was again accompanied by his faithful hierogrammatist, E. Weidenbach. On the second of April he left for Cairo, and this time with the design of visiting the Eastern Delta and the localities of the ruins there. These were of special importance for Biblical geography. He first inspected the Persian-Egyptian monuments which had just been excavated by the workmen on the Suez Canal. According to his views these had been dug up from the canal constructed by Darius, and were memorials intended to adorn that great undertaking. After also examining the other monuments found in the neighborhood of the excavations of De Lesseps, together with their surroundings, he proceeded in quest of the site of ancient Pelusium.[81] The shingle bed which covers the whole Gesiret-el-Farama is bounded towards the east by a continuous bank, which can be traced till beyond the western Tell-el-Her, and whose fortress-like curves separate the shingle field upon its declivity from the sand dunes of the desert. Lepsius believed that he had found there the locality of the ancient Hauaris (auaris), so often sought for, and thus proved that this was not to be looked for in Tanis, but on the site or in the neighborhood of the later Pelusium. In the Herin Tell-el-Her he thought might perhaps be recognized a remnant of the old name Ha-uar, the ancient Egyptian form of Auaris. These conjectures have not been shaken by any later investigations, but on the other hand Lepsius’ opinion, previously expressed, that Tell el-Maschuta, which he visited before Pelusium, was the Ramses of the Bible, seems to be disproved by the latest excavations of Naville, and this place must now be regarded as the Biblical Pithom and Succoth, in spite of the opposition which that view afterwards encountered from the Master.[82]

His greatest prize was to fall into his hands at San, the Tanis of the Greeks, the Zo’an of the Bible, whither he was accompanied by the Viennese Egyptologist Reinisch. This acquisition was of such great and epoch-making importance as to throw into the shade all the other gains of the journey. The discovery of the decree of Tanis, or the Tablet of Canopus, amongst the ruins of San, is one of the most important discoveries made in Egypt since the finding of the Rosetta stone. It furnishes proof of the correctness of the results which had been obtained up to 1866, by the Egyptologists with the aid of the Rosetta key and Champollion’s method of deciphering hieroglyphics.

This rare monument consists of a stela of solid limestone, and has on its front surface a hieroglyphic inscription of thirty-seven lines, and the Greek translation of the same in seventy-six closely written lines. On the edge of the tablet, though Lepsius did not notice it at first, is the same text in demotic writing, that is, in the popular dialect of the later heathen Egyptians. The whole stone, including the rounded upper surface, is 2.16 meters high and 0.78 of a meter wide, and is at present kept in the museum of Bulak. It is in excellent preservation, and Lepsius could easily read both texts at the first trial.

The translation of the hieroglyphic decree, which was made on the basis of Champollion’s method of deciphering and by the aid of the grammars and lexicons published between the time when that was discovered and the year 1866, agreed perfectly with the Greek version thereof upon the same stone. With this valuable monument for a basis it was thus once for all positively determined that the study of the Egyptian language was being pursued according to the correct method.

The decree discovered by Lepsius was dated in the ninth year of Ptolemy Euergetes I. Like the decree upon the Rosetta stone it had been passed by priests, who had assembled at Canopus for the celebration of the birthday of the king. In the first part of it were enumerated the benefits conferred by the ruler of the land, which had caused the hierarchy to accord to him many new honors in addition to those conferred upon his predecessor. In the part establishing a new popular festival to be celebrated in honor of Euergetes in all the temples of the country, there occurred certain arrangements of the calendar from which, as Lepsius immediately perceived, it must be inferred that a mutable year had been in use at an early period, in addition to the fixed year. It was also evident that in the ninth year of Euergetes I. the fixed Julian year had already come into use in the civil affairs of Egypt.

The hieroglyphic names for Canopus, Syria, Phœnicia, the island of Cyprus and Persia, could be determined with the aid of the Greek translation. This weighty document also furnished much important information regarding history, chronology and the calendar. Egyptian philology is indebted to these inscriptions for confirmation only, if we except a few additions to the dictionary, and some peculiarities of the dialect of Lower Egypt in which they were written.

Lepsius immediately made the monument which he had discovered the common property of science, in a model publication[83] containing both texts, which he accompanied by thorough translations and most important explanations. In so doing he gave an example worthy of imitation to Mariette, the great autocrat of all the monuments in Egypt, who always published the inscriptions which he excavated long after their discovery.

Invested with a new and illustrious honorary title,[84] Lepsius returned to Berlin, and there resumed his old labors with all his energy.