London, 20 Oct. 1827.
POSTSCRIPT.—I find that some similar remarks have been made by the late Sir William Watson, in his Treatise on Time. He estimated, from some experiments made in company with his friend Herschel, the greatest possible velocity of sensation, such as to admit of about three hundred distinct impressions on the eye or the ear in a second. “It is true,” he observes, “that whoever attends to what passes in his imagination on particular occasions, will be struck at the apparent rapidity with which ideas appear to flow at times, and will be apt to suspect them far to exceed sensation in that respect. But it is probable that we are ourselves deceived in such cases.” P. 38. But there are no direct experiments to prove this opinion. On the other hand, a sound may be continuous, and yet consist of only about twenty vibrations, or still fewer, in a second.
HIEROGLYPHICAL Fragments, illustrative of Inscriptions preserved in the BRITISH MUSEUM, with some remarks on Mr. CHAMPOLLION’s opinions. In a Letter to the Cavaliere SAN QUINTINO. By a Correspondent. [◊]
My dear Sir,
You will be glad to hear that I have made some little progress in study of the Enchorial inscriptions which I had lately the pleasure of showing you: my steps have, as usual, been guided by no system whatever: they have been wholly empirical, and though very slow, I trust they are so much the more sure: and I hope they will at least serve as an excuse for my reminding you of the expectations you kindly allowed me to entertain, that you would send me copies of any thing of the kind that you might find among the objects entrusted to your care at Turin. What I have lately done has only been to ascertain the dates of many of the tablets sent by Mr. Salt [p311] from Sacchara, all of them about the time of the last Cleopatra: to identify the Enchorial name of Ptolemy DIONYSUS, and to make out a passage relating to a donation of MUCH GOLD AND SILVER AND GEMS TO THE SANCTUARY OF THE GREAT GOD AT MEMPHIS. The different forms of the characters employed by the writers, in the same words, constitute also a valuable addition to be means of deciphering any new inscriptions of a similar nature, and I have already incorporated many of them with my little Enchorial Dictionary.
The 48th and 49th plates of the Hieroglyphics, already published, contain two tablets, apparently funerary, but without any dates of the reigns: the ages of the persons seem to be expressed in the hieroglyphical lines. In the 49th we find the name Berenice twice in the Enchorial letters, and once in hieroglyphics; followed here by Arsinoe, possibly as her mother.
This tablet, coarse as it is, abundantly shows that Horapollo and Champollion are both correct, independently, as it seems, of each other, in considering the rings, or cartouches, as chiefly confined to the names of royal personages; and that I inferred the contrary somewhat too hastily, from observing that the imitations of those rings were attached in the Enchorial inscription of Rosetta, to several names not royal, and from having found such rings in other hieroglyphical inscriptions, without the usual epithets of kings. I had, indeed, remarked, that a “mysterious” name was sometimes observable in the manuscripts without a ring, and I had pointed out the same group as a name in Lord Mountnorris’s manuscript, which Mr. Champollion considers as the true name: but I am perfectly ready to admit that Mr. Champollion has materially improved on this hint, as he has on many others.
The same line of hieroglyphics, however, contributes to add to my reluctance in admitting Mr. Champollion’s reading of P.T.H; a group which I considered as very probably representing these letters long before the date of his publications; though I had only fully identified the two first characters; it seems to me to agree better with PETEH than with PHTAH; and I am inclined to think it was the beginning of the names Petosiris, Peteharpocrates, and other similiar words, [p312] as it is here annexed to the names of two or three other deities. But I am by no means confident on the subject; and beg only to be allowed a few years more to collect further evidence, without being accused of resisting conviction.
I must also claim a similar indulgence for my opinion respecting the bird and the disc; which is so constantly found between two names, that I could not avoid supposing it to mean simply son; I confess that the arguments which Mr. Champollion has drawn from the application of this character to some of the Roman names, as well as those which Mr. Salt has deduced from the inscriptions which he has published, are at least sufficient to silence me; I had, indeed, long before observed that the first name of one pair of rings scarcely ever found as the second of another, though I fancied the Minervean obelisk might afford an exception. On the other hand, I cannot explain, upon Mr. Champollion’s theory, the order of the names in the tablet of Abydus, which might be supposed to have been purposely intended to perpetuate this discussion.
It is admitted that this tablet contains the names of a chronological series of kings, each characterized by one ring, containing what I have always considered as the true names of the persons in question. It is easy to grant to him that they are the praenomens only; as is common in all modern chronology. But how comes it that there is one exception to this, and that the reigning monarch is characterized by his second name only, where he first occurs, and where we should expect to find his father? This is precisely what would have been required if the document had been forged to support my opinion; though I should certainly have been very ungrateful for an argument, which is more calculated to increase the difficulty than to remove it.