The germ of Champollion's discovery consisted in the bringing together of two sets of characters enclosed in cartouches. One of them is in the Rosetta inscription itself; the other, on the plinth of an obelisk in the island of Philæ. The name of Cleopatra was associated with the one inscription, and that of Ptolemy with the other. It was clear that if the two names, written
and
, were really Ptolemaios and Cleopatra, they must include several identical signs or letters; in Ptolemaios the quadrangular figure □, being the first, must stand for P, and this in Cleopatra was found to occur in the right place, standing fifth in order. The third sign
in Ptolemaios must be an o, and the fourth
an l. Now the lion for l occurs second in Cleopatra, and the knotted cord for o fourth. In this way, proceeding by comparison with other names, that of Alexander, or Alksantrs, was next discovered,
