the exercise of his inventive faculties-led him, indeed, to the inference that the Rings on the Rosetta stone and other monuments contained the names of Kings, which, as we have seen, had already occurred to Barthelemy and Zoega. In that treatise he arranged some twenty of these names, and among them that of Ptolemy, which occurs in the hieroglyphic text of the stone. The name of Berenice, which is there wanting, he found in the copy of a of a hieroglyphic inscription on the doorway at Karnak, where the two are mentioned together as the "Saviour Gods." He endeavoured to decipher these two names hieroglyphically, but with such incomplete success, that, of their thirteen signs, he attempted to explain but eleven, and of these eleven, he guessed eight more or less incorrectly. How could it be otherwise, when his speculations were based on no certain or definite value of the individual hieroglyphics? The element of truth contained in the discovery was eclipsed again by the preponderance of error. His sagacity in connecting the name of Ptolemy on the stone with the Ring at Karnak led him to the former; the latter was the necessary consequence of a faulty method. This prevented him from ever contemplating the possibility of a purely phonetic alphabet, although he suspected a "certain kind of syllabic system," in itself a very obscure and uncritical expression. He was equally unconscious of the existence of several signs for one sound, the so-called homophone signs, the real key to the hieroglyphic characters, although the hieroglyphic MSS. of the Book of the Dead, which he collected, might have led him to infer it.

But, lastly, his hieroglyphic alphabet, as conceived by him, was no alphabet for the language, but only for writing the proper names, and, indeed, only the foreign names; a supplementary expedient in short, similar, as he himself observed, to that in use among the Chinese, in aid of a system of writing devoid of phonetic elements.

On the publication of Champollion's alphabet, in the autumn of 1822, Young made a vain attempt to appropriate this discovery to himself. He took his stand on the names of Memnon, Sesostris, and others, whose Rings he had traced on the monuments with great sagacity, but without having guessed their meaning even in one single instance; for in some cases they belong to totally different kings, and in others do not give the name of the king which he had conjectured. But, lastly, neither his own knowledge, nor hieroglyphical science in general, were in the slightest degree advanced by this sort of guessing at names as yet undeciphered. Young had begun with guessing, and ended with identifying two important Rings out of about twenty; but he had actually deciphered and discovered nothing at all. The only further advantages resulting from his researches were confined to the enchorial or demotic character. Of this he edited several specimens, deeds of sale, and the like, and latterly was occupied upon a dictionary of the language, which appeared after his death.224 Neither in the interpretation of these documents, nor in the dictionary itself, does he give any more satisfactory account than formerly either of the words explained, or his method of deciphering or reading them.

The first attempt at strictly philological investigation in this department was Kosegarten's interpretation, while Young was still living, of the names and titles of several of the Ptolemies, contained in a bilinguar papyrus in the collection at Berlin, out of which he formed the beginning of an alphabet, and discovered several grammatical forms. 225

Since the appearance of this work, M. de Saulcy has

224 Th. Young, Rudiments of an Egyptian Dictionary in the Ancient Enchorial Character. London, 1830. 8vo.

225 I. G. L. Kosegarten, Bemerkungen über den ägyptischen Text eines Papyrus. Greifswalde, 1824.

published, as I understand, a book on the demotic system. Hitherto less progress has been made in these two characters than in the hieroglyphics. It is only by applying to them the same method as has been employed in the latter, that any important success can be anticipated. Documents in both these dialects are not wanting in Germany, since, through the efforts of royal zeal and munificence, the Berlin museum, in addition to its previous collection of demotic papyri, has now been enriched by others of no little importance in the hieratic character.

IV. THE HIEROGLYPHIC ALPHABET. CHAMPOLI.ION LE JEUNE.

JEAN FRANÇOIS CHAMPOLLION, surnamed Le Jeune, as younger brother of M. Champollion-Figeac, was born in the neighbourhood of Grenoble in 1790, and appeared from his earliest youth to be the destined instrument of forwarding Egyptian research. Fascinated by the charm of this land of wonders, and the renown of Buonaparte's great expedition, when a youth of seventeen, he laid before his teachers at Grenoble, in September 1807, a plan of his treatise on the geography of ancient Egypt, with an introduction and map, as a specimen of the first part of a comprehensive work on the language, writing, and religion of the Egyptians. With these pages in his hand, he presented himself to the principal men of science at Paris, and after three years of research, especially under the guidance of De Sacy, he, in September 1810, commenced printing his introduction to the above work, which appeared in 1814. In it he mentions cursorily some corrections and completions of Akerblad's alphabet of the enchorial inscriptions 226, and gives a short sketch

226 P. 23. tûeb, priestess; ēp, tribute; mes, to beget; ennuti, godlike. P. 41. ti-scheri, daughter, where he explains the symbolic sign as a "standing abbreviation." He recognised the rest of the name

of his own comprehensive and systematic researches into the Coptic. A grammar and dictionary of that language, which he then projected, maintained ever afterwards its reputation among Coptic philologers.

These early labours of Champollion show that he had, following up the method of Akerblad, made considerable progress in the decipherment of the enchorial inscription, and nearly succeeded in discovering the symbolic signs which occur in it. 227 It is clear that he, as well as his contemporaries, notwithstanding Zoega's arguments, considered the hieroglyphics to be a purely symbolic character. A further research in the same direction furnished him with the fact, that the character of the hieratic papyri was formed from the hieroglyphic, as a running hand. This led him to the conclusion, as expressed in a paper laid before the Institute at Paris in 1821 228, that the hieratic character is also symbolic, and not alphabetic. Champollion, no less than Young, was led to this more accurate view upon his own independent grounds, although each had information through De Sacy of the other's researches, and although both were animated by a warm spirit of emulation. The denial of any phonetic element in the hieratic character was a natural conclusion from false premises, which Champollion shared in common with the rest; whereas Young was led to an approach to the truth,

of Arsinoe after that of Kanephora, and read Tecknō for Diogenes (Akerblad had read Tiokne). P. 103. Rem-cheme, men of Egypt, i. e. Egyptians, from the Sahidic kēme, Baschmuric kēmi, Memphitic chēmi, Egypt. P. 106. On the omission of the vowels in the Egyptian (i. e. demotic) inscription. P. 362. Mephi, Memphis. P. 265. Man-alek santros, place of Alexander, i.e. Alexandria. 227 See the example quoted from p. 41. in the last note.

228 De l'Écriture Hiératique des anciens Egyptiens, par M. Champollion le Jeune, ancien Professeur à la Faculté des Lettres de l'Académie de Grenoble (from which office he was removed on account of his political opinions). Explication des Planches, 1821. Fol. 7 pages of text.

merely by an assumption foreign to his own system, and one from the very first inseparably clogged with error.

This truth Champollion, in the following year, encouraged evidently by Young's attempt to analyse those two Rings, concerning the import of which no doubt could exist, succeeded in actually discoveringbut by a very different method, and one peculiar to himself. His immortal letter to Dacier, of September 1822 (published in December of the same year), shows that he required but to shake off his prejudice as to the exclusively symbolic nature of the hieroglyphics, in order to perceive the real state of the fact.

As there was this discrepancy in their method, we do not consider ourselves justified in saying that Champollion did but improve upon Young's discovery -for he had from the commencement adopted the opposite course and followed it up, free from the narrow views of Akerblad, and with more good faith and depth of reasoning. He had, moreover, given up the study of the demotic character, seeing that Young's ingenious comparison of it with the papyri must introduce uncertain clements into the inquiry. Of the hieratic character he had then formed a clear conception, and was drawn by it to the hieroglyphics, as the true point from whence the inquiry should have commenced.

Having thus been led to perceive that the hieroglyphics were the true key to the enigma of Egyptian writing, he further discerned in the Royal Rings, so many of which occurred on the monuments, both in the European collections and the great Egyptian work, the certain data both for establishing an alphabet, (not as among the Chinese, a mere auxiliary expedient adapted to the spelling of foreign names, but an organic system of writing for the whole language)—and also for distinguishing its individual elements and testing their value when distinguished. The idea of homo