An account of some recent discoveries in hieroglyphical literature, and Egyptian antiquities

by Thomas Young

My full conviction respecting the nature and origin of the enchorial character I expressed at the end of a collection of letters, inserted in the Museum Criticum, and published in 1815. It was not, however, till the next year, that I obtained the most complete evidence of the truth of my opinion: having been obligingly accommodated, by Mr. William Hamilton, with the use of his copy of the great Description de l’Égypte, as far as it was then published, I proceeded to study its contents: and I discovered, at length, that several of the manuscripts on papyrus, which had been carefully published in that work, exhibited very frequently the same text in different forms, deviating more or less from the perfect resemblance of the objects intended to be delineated, till they became, in many cases, mere lines and curves, and dashes and flourishes; but still answering, character for character, to the hieroglyphical or hieratic writing of the same chapters, found in other manuscripts, and of which the identity was sufficiently indicated, besides this coincidence, by the similarity of the larger tablets, or pictural representations, at the head of each chapter or column, which are almost universally found on the margins of manuscripts of a mythological nature. And the enchorial inscription of the pillar of Rosetta resembled very accurately, in its general appearance, the most unpicturesque of these manuscripts. It did not, however, by any means agree, character for character, with the “sacred letters” of the first inscription, though in many instances, by means of some intermediate steps derived from the manuscripts on papyrus, the characters could be traced into each other with sufficient accuracy, to supersede every idea of any essential diversity in the principles of representation employed. The want of a more perfect correspondence could only be explained, by considering the sacred characters as the remains of a more ancient and solemn mode of expression, which had been superseded, in common life, by other words and phrases; and, in several cases, it seemed probable, that the forms of the characters had been so far degraded and confused, that the addition of a greater number of distinguishing epithets had become necessary, in order that the sense might be rendered intelligible.

A particular account of this comparison of the different modes of writing, and a detailed reference to the passages of the respective manuscripts from which they were derived, is contained in two letters, printed in 1816, as a part of the seventh number of the Museum Criticum, and of which several copies were immediately sent to Paris, and to other parts of the Continent, although the actual publication of the number was retarded till 1821.

The principal contents of these letters were, however, incorporated with other matter into a more extensive article, which I contributed in 1819 to the Supplement of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I had made drawings of the plates, which were engraved with great fidelity by Mr. Turrell, about a year before; and having been favoured by the proprietors with a few separate copies, I had sent them to some of my friends, in the summer of 1818, with a cover, on which was printed the title Hieroglyphical Vocabulary: these plates, however, were precisely the same that were afterwards contained in the fourth volume of the Supplement, as belonging to the article Egypt.

The characters explained, with confidence, in this vocabulary, amounted to about 200; the number which had been immediately obtained from the pillar of Rosetta having been somewhat more than doubled by means of a careful examination of other monuments, on which the terms god, and king, and other epithets, already ascertained, were so applied as to furnish either certain or probable conclusions respecting the principal deities of the Egyptians, and respecting several of the latest and the most celebrated of their sovereigns. The higher numerals were readily obtained, by a comparison of some inscriptions, in which they stood combined with units and with tens. The hieratic manuscripts assisted also in this identification, by facilitating the determination of the hieroglyphic corresponding to a given enchorial character. The names of Phthah and of Apis were still left on the pillar: to these I was now enabled to add, with tolerable certainty, those of Ammon, or Jupiter, Phre, or the Sun, Rhea, or Urania, Ioh, or the Moon, Thoth, or Hermes, Osiris, Arueris, or Apollo, Isis, Nephthe, Buto, Horus, and Mneuis; besides a multitude of others, to whom I found it convenient to appropriate fictitious or temporary appellations, for the greater convenience of reference. Thus I have called Cerexochus, a figure whose real name was perhaps Amonrasonther, and my Hyperion and Platypterus are supposed by Mr. Champollion to belong to Horus and to Hercules. Of the kings, I have ascertained, as far as the testimony of the Greek and Latin historians and inscriptions would enable me, the names of Mesphres, Memnon, Sesostris, Nechao, Psammis, and Amasis; and having obtained the distinction of Ptolemy Soter from the pillar, I afterwards determined, by its assistance, the name of his queen Berenice. The termination indicating the female sex was another important result of this comparison of various monuments.

I must acknowledge that my respect for the good sense and accomplishments of my Egyptian allies by no means became more profound as our acquaintance became more intimate: on the contrary, all that Juvenal, in a moment, as might have been supposed, of discontent, had held up to ridicule of their superstitions and their depravity, became, as it were, displayed before my eyes, as the details of their mythology became more intelligible. That Plato professed to have learned much during a long residence in Egypt I can easily believe: he may very probably have derived from thence some hints, that led to his own purer doctrines of the immortality of the soul, although he may have been tempted to exaggerate a little the other advantages of his travels in search of truth; but that Pythagoras ever professed to have acquired any solid knowledge from the Egyptians, appears to me to be very inconsistent with what we know of the history of this illustrious philosopher, speculative and visionary as some of his arithmetical metaphysics seem to have been. I shall enter into some further details of my conclusions, in the words which I have already employed in the article Egypt.

“By means of the knowledge of the hieroglyphical characters, which has been already obtained, we are fully competent to form a general idea of the nature of the inscriptions on the principal Egyptian monuments that are extant. Numerous as they are, there is scarcely one of them which we are not able to refer to the class either of sepulchral or of votive inscriptions; astronomical and chronological there seem to be none, since the numerical characters, which have been perfectly ascertained, have not yet been found to occur in such a form as they necessarily must have assumed in the records of this description: of a historical nature, we can only find the triumphal, which are often sufficiently distinguishable, but they may also always be referred to the votive; since whoever, related his own exploits thought it wisest to attribute the glory of them to some deity, and whoever recorded those of another was generally disposed to intermix divine honours with his panegyric. It has, indeed, been asserted, that the Egyptians were not in the habit of deifying any mortal persons; but the inscription of Rosetta is by no means the only one in which the sovereigns of Egypt are inserted in the number of its deities; the custom is observable in monuments of a much earlier age: indeed, in such a country, it might be considered as a kind of dilemma of degradation, whether it was most ridiculous to be made a divinity, or to be excluded from so plebeian an assemblage; but flattery is more prone to err by commission than by omission, and, consequently, we find the terms king and god very generally inseparable. The sepulchral inscriptions, from the attention that was paid in Egypt to the obsequies of the dead, appear, on the whole, to constitute the most considerable part of the Egyptian literature which remains, and they afford us, upon a comparative examination, some very remarkable peculiarities. The general tenor of all these inscriptions appears to be, as might be expected from the testimony of Herodotus, the identification of the deceased with the god Osiris, and probably, if a female, with Isis; and the subject of the most usual representations seems to be the reception of this new personage by the principal deities, to whom he now stands in a relation expressed in the respective inscriptions; the honour of an apotheosis, reserved by the ancient Romans for emperors, and by the modern for saints, having been apparently extended by the old Egyptians to private individuals of all descriptions[; as indeed appears to be partially hinted in the concluding line of the golden verses of the Pythagoreans]. It required an extensive comparison of these inscriptions to recognise their precise nature, since they seldom contain a name surrounded by a ring in its usual form: sometimes, however, as in the green sarcophagus of the British Museum, a distinct name is very often repeated, and preceded by that of Osiris; while, in most other instances, there is a certain combination of characters, bearing evident relation to the personage delineated, which occurs, after the symbols of Osiris, instead of the name; so that either the ring was simply omitted on this occasion, or a new and perhaps a mysterious name was employed, consisting frequently of the appellations of several distinct deities, and probably analogous to the real name[, which will, indeed, hereafter appear to have consisted not uncommonly of a similar combination]. That the characteristic phrase[, or group], so repeated, must have had some relation to the deceased, is proved by its scarcely ever being alike in any two monuments that have been compared, while almost every other part of the manuscripts and inscriptions are the same in many different instances, and some of them in almost all; and this same phrase maybe observed in Lord Mountnorris’s and Mr. Bankes’s manuscripts, placed over the head of the person who is brought up between the two goddesses, to make his appearance before the true Osiris, in his own person, and in his judicial capacity, with his counsellors about him, and the balance of justice before him.” ...

“The tablet of the last judgment, which is so well illustrated by the testimony of Diodorus concerning the funerals of the Egyptians, is found near the end of almost all the manuscripts upon papyrus, that are so frequently discovered in the coffins of the mummies, and among others in Lord Mountnorris’s hieratic manuscript, printed in the collection of the Egyptian Society. The great deity sits on the left, holding the hook and the whip or fan; his name and titles are generally placed over him; but this part of the present manuscript is a little injured. Before him is a kind of mace, supporting something like the skin of a leopard; then a female Cerberus, and on a shelf over her head, the tetrad of termini, which have been already distinguished by the names “Tetrarcha,” Anubis, Macedo, and “Hieracion,” each having had his appropriate denomination written over his head. Behind the Cerberis stands Thoth, with his style and tablet, having just begun to write. Over his head, in two columns, we find his name and titles, including his designation as a scribe. The balance follows, with a little baboon as a kind of genius, sitting on it. Under the beam stand “Cteristes” and “Hyperion” [supposed by Mr. Champollion to be Anubis and Horus], who are employed in adjusting the equipoise; but their names in this manuscript are omitted. The five columns over the balance are only remarkable as containing, in this instance, the characteristic phrase, or the name of the deceased, intermixed with other characters. Beyond the balance stands a female, holding the sceptre of Isis, who seems to be called Rhea, the wife of the Sun. She is looking back at the personage, who holds up his hand as a mark of respect, and who is identified as the deceased by the name simply placed over him, without any exordium. He is followed by a second goddess, who is also holding up her hands, in token of respect; and whose name looks like a personification of honour or glory, unless it is simply intended to signify “a divine priestess,” belonging to the order of the Pterophori, mentioned on the Rosetta stone. The forty two assessors, [noticed by Diodorus and by these manuscripts], are wanting in this tablet; and, in many other manuscripts their number is curtailed, to make room for other subjects; but, in several of those which are engraved in the Déscription de l’Egypte, they are all represented, sometimes as sitting figures, and sometimes standing as termini, with their feet united.”

“The principal part of the text of all these manuscripts appears to consist of a collection of hymns, or rather homages, to certain deities, generally expressed in the name of the deceased, with his title of Osiris, although the true Osiris is not excluded from the groups that are introduced. The upper part of each manuscript is occupied by a series of pictural tablets; under them are vertical columns of distinct hieroglyphics, or, in the epistolographic manuscripts, pages of the text, which are commonly divided into paragraphs, with a tablet at the head of each; the first words being constantly written with red ink, made of a kind of ochre, as the black is of a carbonaceous substance. The beginning of the manuscripts is seldom entire, being always at the outside of the roll; as the umbilicus of the Romans was synonymous with the end.” ...

“The coffins of the mummies, and the larger sarcophagi of stone, are generally covered with representations extremely similar to some of those which are found in the manuscripts. The judicial tablet is frequently delineated on the middle of the coffins; above it are Isis and Nephthe, at the sides, and apparently Rhea in the middle, with outspread wings. The space below is chiefly occupied by figures of twenty or thirty of the principal deities, to whom the deceased, in his mystical character, is doing homage; each of them being probably designated by the relationship in which he stands to the new representative of Osiris. In the sculptures, the figures are generally less numerous; the same deities are commonly represented as on the painted coffins, but without the repetition of the suppliant, and in an order subject to some little variation. The large sarcophagus of granite, in the British Museum, brought from Cairo, and formerly called the Lover’s Fountain, has the name of Apis, as a part of the characteristic denomination. This circumstance, at first sight, seemed to make it evident that it must have been intended to contain the mummy of an Apis, for which its magnitude renders it well calculated; but when the symbols of other deities were found in the mystic names upon various other monuments, this inference could no longer be considered as absolutely conclusive.” ...

“Of the triumphal monuments, the most magnificent are the obeliscs, which are reported by Pliny to have been dedicated to the Sun; and there is every reason to suppose, that the translation of one of these inscriptions, preserved by Ammianus Marcellinus, after Hermapion, contains a true representation of a part of its contents, more especially as ‘the mighty Apollo’ of Hermapion agrees completely with the hawk, the bull, and the arm, which usually occupy the beginning of each inscription. These symbols are generally followed by a number of pompous titles, not always very intimately connected with each other, and among them we often find that of ‘Lord of the asp bearing diadems,’ with some others, immediately preceding the name and parentage of the sovereign, who is the principal subject of the inscription. The obelisc at Heliopolis is without the bull; and the whole inscription may be supposed to have signified something of this kind.