Champollion’s work was carried on by other scholars after his death. In 1867, Lepsius discovered in the ruins of Tanis a second trilingual inscription, the so-called decree of Cano’pus, the study of which fully confirmed the theories previously advanced. The work of Lepsius gave a new impulse to Egyptian study. His immediate successor in this line of exploration was Mariette, who built up the museum of Boulaq. Many others in France, England, Germany, and America, have devoted their lives to the study of Egypt and her systems of writing. The problem that baffled alike Greeks, Romans, and all subsequent nations, has been solved at last; and the door has been opened to “a library of stones and papyri in myriads of volumes,” in which every branch of literature is represented. The crumbling walls scattered throughout “the Monumental Land” now utter intelligible words; the very implements and toys have their stories to tell; and many a tomb has yielded up its brittle treasure of papyrus, its eulogy or legend, its history or hymn.
System of Writing.—From the earliest times the Egyptians possessed a phonetic system of writing. They had an alphabet of twenty-two characters, consisting of consonants only, which became the basis of the Phœnician, and through it of every ancient and modern European alphabet. Besides these consonants, there were in use numerous syllabic signs, in which two or three consonant sounds, or a consonant and a vowel sound, were represented by one character. Owing to the absence of vowel signs, it was often next to impossible to discriminate between words composed of the same consonants, but having different significations (as it would be in English, if, for instance, we should write s t r for star, store, stair, or straw, and leave the signification of the three consonants to be determined by the context). To obviate this difficulty, the Egyptians early invented a simple system of determinatives. A determinative is a picture of the object described by the word in question, and was placed after the name. Thus the word rômet, signifying man, was followed by the picture of a kneeling man,
as was also every word signifying a male human being or his occupation. After the word himet, signifying woman, after the names of goddesses, the proper names of women, and all words denoting female human beings, was placed the picture of a woman sitting.
After the names of gods occurred a typical representation of a god. In like manner, to the names of Egyptian cities was attached the representation of a plan of a city, while the picture of a range of hills distinguished foreign localities (mountains being unknown in the Nile Valley).
Some of these determinatives in time came to be used instead of the words they originally determined; and thus arose word-signs (ideograms), which, though at first comparatively few, soon increased in number. In this way, the picture of the city’s plan, originally a mere determinative, was eventually used as the written sign of the word city itself. The Egyptian system of writing is thus extremely complicated, consisting, as it does, of an alphabet, syllabic signs, and word-signs (ideograms), supplemented by a system of determinatives. The whole number of signs exceeds 2000. (See Moldehnke’s “Language of the Ancient Egyptians.”)
Hieroglyphics.—The oldest form of Egyptian writing is called hieroglyphic;[13] its characters are well-drawn pictures of natural objects; but these pictures had no ideographic values. They were originally, as above stated, partly determinative in their nature. The oldest hieroglyphical texts that have come down to us have been referred to the II. Dynasty (now estimated at about 4000 B.C.). The youngest texts date from the period of the Roman Empire.
The inconvenience experienced in writing the hieroglyphics early led to the invention of abbreviated forms. These were of two kinds, viz., the linear hieroglyphics, and a derivative therefrom, the cursive hieratic character, suitable for rapid writing. On some of the stone blocks in the Pyramid of Cheops (ke’ops), the monarch’s name is inscribed in hieratic characters; while the oldest texts of the so-called Book of the Dead are in linear hieroglyphics, which remained the favorite form for this religious work, as well as for most funeral papyri. There are two kinds of hieratic—one closely resembling the old linear hieroglyphics, and in common use during the Middle Empire (2100-1700 B.C.); the other, a simplified and abbreviated form, introduced early in the period styled the New Empire (about 1530 B.C.). From this second form of hieratic, the Phœnicians derived their alphabet (see p. 20, and plate p. 87). In the seventh century B.C., the hieratic gave place to the still simpler demotic, which has not inaptly been called Egyptian short-hand.