the repetitions of certain combinations of characters in the inscription. His next step was to write the Greek text over the enchorial in such a manner, that what he supposed to be coincident words and passages should be brought into juxtaposition; thus the intermediate parts of the respective writings were of course brought near together, and the field of comparison became constantly less. As the result of the whole, he found nineteen letters of Akerblad's, and twelve more of his own, beside a star at the end of proper names. He had also, as he believed, found fifty groups of words, the first three of which were those already indicated by De Sacy, and analyzed by Akerblad: to these followed sixteen words which Akerblad had analyzed, and the residue of the fifty were his own. To these he added one hundred and fifty more, for which he thought he had found the corresponding word in the Greek inscription. Some of these afterward proved to be entirely wrong.

It would be most unjust to an acute, ingenious, and indefatigable mind, to undervalue the discoveries of Dr. Young. If he did not discover the whole art of deciphering the mysterious characters of Egypt, let it be remembered that the merit of complete discovery belongs to no one individual; and that where all were contributors to a common end, no one had, up to the time of Young's discoveries, accomplished as much as he had. He certainly, as Mr. Gliddon has stated, "cast the first beam of true light on the method adopted by the Egyptians in their peculiar art of writing." He first positively indicated on the Rosetta stone the name of Ptolemy, and on the doorway of Karnac read that of Berenice, both in the hieroglyphic characters. He it was who first showed that of the two Egyptian inscriptions, the one, the enchorial, was "in good measure a corruption, abridgment, or running form of the other." He also is entitled to the merit of having found out the Egyptian mode of writing numbers. But he probably never contemplated the possibility of an entire phonetic alphabet as existing in the hieroglyphics. The utmost that he did was to suspect the existence of what he indicates by the vague phrase "a certain kind of syllabic system;" and that some few of the characters were the representatives of letters; he certainly knew nothing of the important fact of the use of what are called homophones; that is, of several different signs, which, by means of the initial letter in the name of that which they represent, are made to express the same sound* Still it must be admitted that Young prepared the way, in many respects, for Champollion le Jeune; so called, to distinguish him from his elder brother, Champollion-Figeac.

Jean Francois Champollion would have been deemed, in any age, an extraordinary man. He was born in 1790, and from his earliest youth seemed destined to excel in that department of letters to which he devoted his life. The expedition of Napoleon, led to results which filled his mind with the contemplation of the strange revelations unfolded by a land of wonders. His imagination kindled as he dwelt upon the mysterious symbols which he knew embodied the long lost history of the early civilization of our globe. He found a fascination in the very effort to understand them; and, while yet a boy, at the age of seventeen, he laid before his teachers, as a literary exercise, an outline of a treatise on the ancient geography of Egypt, with an introduction and map. These he presented, as a specimen of the first part of a comprehensive work which he contemplated, on the language, writing, and religion of the ancient Egyptians. The boy who, at the age of seventeen, indulged in such lofty aspirations, and found agreeable mental excitement in the pursuit of such studies as he had adopted, needed but health and opportunity to leave behind him an honored name, and to rear a monument on which the lettered men of future times would look with grateful admiration.

With his MSS. in his hand he presented himself, ere yet he was a man, to the principal scientific men of Paris, and, fostered by the advice and guidance of De Sacy, at the age of twenty, he commenced printing the introduction to his proposed work. It appeared in 1814, when he was twenty-four years old, and contained corrections of, and additions to Akerblad's alphabet, and related the result of his own researches into the Coptic. The grammar and dictionary of that language, which he then projected, maintains to this day its high reputation. But he was travelling over an untried field, where way-marks were few and indistinct at best, and his steps were necessarily slow and toilsome. His enthusiasm, however, sustained him. He was laboring under an error, which he afterward discovered, and magnanimously confessed. Champollion le Jeune proved himself to be a great man, for he was not ashamed to say "I have been wrong." The error alluded to, consisted in his deeming the hieroglyphics to be purely symbolic. Out of this error he extricated himself; but not until he satisfied himself that the hieroglyphical was the most ancient form of Egyptian writing, and that, would he succeed, his researches must begin with that. He had devoted time, as Young and others had done, to the enchorial or demotic writing, and had also studied the hieratic, as it is called, which we will explain presently; but now, leaving these, his whole attention was directed to the hieroglyphics; and it was in this work that he reared for himself an enduring renown.

It is pleasant to remark, in tracing the progress of the human mind in any discovery, the seemingly fortuitous concurrence of circumstances which not unfrequently sheds unexpected light on the path of the discoverer, and without which, to all human seeming, the discovery would, probably, not then have been made. Champollion, in determining to commence with the hieroglyphics, knew full well what others had done. Dr. Young had steadily expressed his belief, that all Egyptian writing originated in the hieroglyphics, and therefore must contain symbolic signs; and not, simply, the alphabetic characters which Akerblad had found in the enchorial inscriptions: this principle he had endeavored to apply to the hieroglyphic names of kings, and had read "Ptolemy" and "Berenice." Dr. Young, however, never had explained the method by which he had proceeded. Beyond these particulars, Champollion derived no aid from him. Having, however, from Young's success, become satisfied of the importance of the royal rings containing proper names, he turned to them. It so happened that as early as 1816, Caillaud, the French traveller, who discovered Meroe, had met at the island of Philae with a small obelisk, which was first discovered by Belzoni. On the pedestal of this obelisk is a Greek inscription, in which occur the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Caillaud made a fac-simile of this inscription; and afterward, an English gentleman, Mr. William Bankes, transported the monument itself to his residence in Dorsetshire, and circulated copies of its hieroglyphic inscriptions among the learned. Both Young and Champollion were acquainted with this monument. To the latter only was it of any value in interpretation. He observed on it hieroglyphics in a ring, precisely similar to those on the Rosetta stone, which Young had interpreted to mean Ptolemy; the Greek inscription led him to suspect that the other ring must contain the name of Cleopatra. The result of his investigation may best be told in his own words, as contained in a letter to M. Dacier: we prefix copies of the two sets of hieroglyphics to make his letter intelligible.

This hieroglyphic Dr. Young had inter

^j preted, on the Rosetta stone, to be the name

of Ptolemy.

Champollion, proceeding on the opinion that the

characters within the ring might be, in some instances

at least, phonetic or alphabetic, thus felt his way to

the truth. •

"The first sign of the name of Cleopatra, which re

presents a kind of quadrant, and which ought to be the letter K, (C)* should not occur in the name of Ptolemy, and it is not there. The second, a crouching lion, which should represent the L, is identical with the fourth of Ptolemy, which is also an L. The third sign is a feather or leaf, which should represent the short vowel E. Two similar leaves may be observed at the end of the name of Ptolemy, which, by their position, must have the sound of E long. The fourth character to the left, represents a kind of flower or root with its stalk bent downward, and should answer to the letter O, and is accordingly the third letter in the name of Ptolemy. The fifth, to the right, is a sort of square, which should represent the letter P, and it is the first in the name of Ptolemy. The sixth, * The Greek Alphabet has no C in it; K is its substitute.