CHAPTER VI.
EGYPTIAN LITERATURE.
The Egyptian Language.—There yet remains one field of Oriental literature for us to visit, and it is specially interesting on account of the valuable treasures it long concealed. These have recently been brought to light in the writings of that people who settled the fertile valley of the Nile in prehistoric times, and adorned the land of Egypt with monuments inscribed with their mysterious characters.
Thousands of inscriptions—some on the walls of vast temples, or of memorial chapels attached to the tombs of private citizens; others hewn in the living rock, or carefully cut on obelisks of granite with chisels of bronze and steel—have endured to our day; and thousands of papyri have come down to us; some of the rolls many feet in length, and covered with figures of men, birds, insects, and reptiles, in profile, often illuminated with high colors and gold wrought in artistic vignettes. The ingenuity of modern science has wrung from these their secrets, and disclosed a wealth of knowledge in connection with the history, literature, civilization, and religion of the ancient Egyptians.
The Egyptian language is undoubtedly Semitic, and, in its oldest form, perhaps represents the primitive Semitic stock. It contains, however, certain elements that are not Semitic, but that seem to have been derived from a tongue of distinct origin, spoken in the country before its conquest by a Semitic race. The language has therefore been called Egypto-Semitic.
EGYPTIAN WRITING.
Decipherment of the Hieroglyphics.—The decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics will always be regarded as one of the greatest triumphs of the present century. As early as 1652, Kircher (kěěr´ker), a learned German Jesuit, attempted to translate the monumental writing; but, by reason of his absurd renderings, only cast discredit on the science of Egyptology. Scholars of the period preferred the study of Coptic, the language of Egyptian Christianity; it was through their labors in this field that the way was prepared for the final interpretation of the older speech.
The Rosetta Stone.—The finding of the Rosetta Stone, in 1799, led to the brilliant discoveries of the French savant, Champollion (sham-pol´le-on). A French officer, while erecting works at Rosetta, in the delta of the Nile, during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, unearthed a piece of black basalt, which contained, in equivalent inscriptions in hieroglyphics, Greek, and demotic (popular hand), a decree conferring divine honors on Ptolemy V., a monarch of the second century B.C. The meaning of the Greek text being known, the hieroglyphics through it were translated. Thomas Young, an English mathematician, and the French scholar, independently, and almost simultaneously, succeeded in finding a true solution of the problem. Young determined correctly the value of some of the characters; but the result of Champollion’s labors were vastly more important. He not only gave the correct rendering of long inscriptions and of numerous papyri, but prepared an Egyptian grammar and a hieroglyphic dictionary that for years were unrivalled as authorities.
The Rosetta Stone.
The famous stone rests on a block of red porphyry in the Egyptian gallery of the British Museum. Dimensions: 3 ft., 1 in. high; 2 ft., 5 in. broad; 6 to 12 in. thick. (Read the “Report of the Committee appointed by the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania to translate the Inscription on the Rosetta Stone.”)