In the 79th plate there are four enchorial lines very distinctly written, and beginning with a date, which must be either 24 or 28, and most probably the latter, as there are 28 stars in the margin: perhaps the 11th of the month, in the reign of Ptolemy the son of Ptolemy, may he live for ever. The rest is not intelligible.
In this manner, my dear Sir, I have been creeping, while others have been flying, though perhaps a little too near the sun. Possibly my friend Champollion, and your friend Seyffarth, would be able to decipher much more of these inscriptions; and it is probable that their versions might differ in almost every particular. In this case it is unnecessary for me to say which of the two explanations I should be inclined to prefer: for it is impossible to deny to Champollion the merit of great industry, and deep, as well as extensive research. I object only to his precipitation, and his love of system, which, I think, cause him to be led away by his own ingenuity, through a series of conclusions unsupported by sufficient evidence. [p316]
As an instance of a hasty and undemonstrated assertion, I shall mention his explanation of the group of characters which he considers (Système, p. 82) as “forming the third person plural of the future in all the verbs of the last nine lines of the hieroglyphical text of Rosetta, expressing the different dispositions of the decree, and answering to Greek verbs, which are always in the infinitive,” and which he naturally enough reads SNE.
There is nothing absolutely incorrect in this statement, but the reader naturally infers from it that the group in question occurs either exclusively or principally in these nine lines. The fact is, however, that in the first five lines, or rather half lines, the group is found ten times, and in the remaining nine, only eighteen, that is, about half as frequently, in proportion to the actual length of the lines: nor can I find any where a context that favours Mr. Champollion’s interpretation; though I have lately observed that an Enchorial group, resembling ´O, is found almost uniformly to answer to the Greek infinitive: being read perhaps MNR or MARE: but I cannot make these characters agree either with the hieroglyphics in question, or with the sounds SNE, which Mr. Champollion attributes to them.
So little is Mr. Champollion in the habit of distinguishing proofs from assertions in his own case, that it is the less surprising that he should sometimes confound them with respect to others. He says, for example, with respect to the nature of the Hieratic characters, which he explained to the Academy of Belles Lettres in 1821, “je me suis convaincu depuis que M. le Dr. Young avait publié avant moi ce même résultat, et de plus, que nous avions été PREVENUS de quelques années, l’un et l’autre, quant au principe de cette découverte et sa définition, par M. Tychsen de Goettingue.” (p. 20.) Professor Tychsen had asserted this agreement as a probable opinion: it was amply demonstrated in 1816; five years afterwards Mr. Champollion thinks he has a right to consider himself as a new inventor of the doctrine, because he chose to neglect what was done in a neighbouring country, and to undervalue the actual proof, in which he had been anticipated, by classing it with a bare assertion to be found in a German publication. [p317] Precisely in the same spirit he remarks, in the next page, that Barthélemy and Zoëga had pointed out the rings as containing proper names: they had, indeed, said that they might be proper names, or moral sentences, or something else; but the only question was, if it was worth questioning at all, to whom belonged the priority of the demonstration that they actually were proper names: which, before the publication of the Archaeologia for 1814, was no where to be found. This publication was the first great step after the discovery of the pillar of Rosetta: the second was the identification of the different kinds of characters, in 1816, by means of the Déscription de l’Egypte: the third, the application of that identification to the names of Ptolemy and Berenice: the fourth, perhaps, was Mr. Bankes’s discovery in Egypt, of the name of Cleopatra, which he sent to Paris: and on these grounds is certainly founded ALL that is at present known of Egyptian literature, for a very considerable proportion of which we are unquestionably indebted to Mr. Champollion.
The French translator of Mr. Browne’s ingenious articles which appeared in the Edinburgh Review, has certainly gone a good deal out of his way to find matter of accusation against Mr. Champollion. He quotes the text of a memoir published in 1821, and afterwards suppressed, in order to show that Mr. Champollion then continued to believe that the hieroglyphics were signs of things and not of sounds; and that he disagreed with those learned persons who had considered the hieratic writing as alphabetical. The date of this suppressed paper is indeed of some consequence, as determining the period at which Mr. Champollion made his rediscovery of what Dr. Young had published in 1816; that is, the fact of the essential identity of the two systems of writing. But the translator might have found in the beginning of the letter to Mr. Dacier, dated in 1822, the same opinion respecting these systems of writing; that is, the hieratic and demotic, which, he says, are not alphabetic, but “ideographic, like the hieroglyphics themselves,” expressing ideas and not sounds: and he adds, that he (!) has deduced from the demotic inscription of Rosetta a series of characters which have a “syllabico-alphabetic [p318] value,” by which foreign proper names were expressed. (p. 2.)
Nothing can possibly agree better than this with the opinions which Dr. Young had long before published; and which he has since confirmed in his octavo volume; and if Mr. Champollion’s ideas upon this subject have sometimes appeared to fluctuate, it has probably been more from a love of system, and a wish to establish originality, than from any new discoveries that he can have made respecting these two modes of writing in particular.
What precise forms of characters may be supposed to answer to the sense in which Mr. Champollion employs the word demotic, cannot very easily be ascertained. It is remarkable that his “SNE” is a group very commonly found in the manuscripts of the Déscription de l’Egypte, which Mr. Champollion might possibly call demotic; while it cannot be identified in the Enchorial Inscription of Rosetta. This is an instance of the difficulty of finding appropriate terms where we have not exact definitions. The difficulty is not avoided by the use of the word Enchorial, except that it may with perfect safety be applied to such inscriptions as are capable of having any of their words identified with the inscription so called on the pillar itself.
The verification of the chronology of Manetho must naturally be a work of time, even after the complete identification of the names of the kings, which cannot yet be admitted to be satisfactory. There is one discordance that it may be right slightly to point out, as it is presented by Plate 43 of the Hieroglyphics: we there find the 29th year of the Sesenchosis of Manetho; and Manetho allots but 21 years to this king, who was the first of his dynasty, and could not, therefore, like Philadelphus, have continued any era from an earlier period.
It is easy to observe, in comparing Mr. Cailliaud’s copy of the Tablet of Abydus, as published by Mr. Champollion, with those of our countrymen, Mr. Bankes and Mr. Wilkinson, contained in the 47th plate of the Hieroglyphics, or with the manuscript copy of Mr. Burton, how much more hastily the French traveller had executed his task than any one of the three Englishmen. [p319]