12 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



how the Nile itself supplied to them a highway for communication, 

 rendered doubly useful by the north winds that blow up stream 

 more than eight months of the year, carrying the traffic up into 

 the interior while the current carries it down; how the Arabian 

 desert on the east and the Libyan on the west secured to them 

 comparative immunity from invasion and opportunity for internal 

 progress. . . . 



One of the prizes of Napoleon's expedition, a black basalt stone, 

 disinterred at Rosetta in 1798, and now in the British Museum, bore 

 three parallel and horizontal inscriptions, all quite distinct. One was 

 in hieroglyphics, the second in the characters called demotic or popu- 

 lar, the third in Greek. Although a great many scientific men ex- 

 hausted their skill upon this trilingual inscription, which was a triple 

 inscription of the same text, no one could make the Greek characters 

 exactly apply to the hieroglyphic signs. Champollion was the first 

 to obtain any success, as early as 1812, but further progress was largely 

 aided by the labors of Thomas Young [a name associated in the 

 history of science with those of Fresnel and Helmholtz]. . . . 



Protected from invasion by the same deserts that isolated them, 

 the people who came from Asia and settled in the Nile valley applied 

 themselves to the regulation of the periodical inundations, and to the 

 distribution of the water. They built towns on the hillocks, in order 

 that the water should not reach them ; and afterwards, with the 

 stones that the two mountain ranges of Libya and Arabia contain in 

 abundance, and by the means of transit afforded by the Nile, they 

 erected monuments that have defied the course of the centuries. . . . 



The paintings in the tombs also show us men at work upon all 

 the arts and all the handicrafts. 'We see there the workers in stone 

 and in wood, the painters of sculpture and of architecture, of furni- 

 ture and carpenters' work; the quarrymen hewing blocks of stone; 

 all the operations of the potter's art; workmen kneading the earth 

 with their feet, or with their hands ; men at work making stocks, oars 

 and sculls; curriers, leather-dyers, and shoe-makers, spinners, cloth- 

 weavers with various shaped looms, glass-makers; goldsmiths, jew- 

 ellers, and blacksmiths.' Among the antiquities still in a state of 

 good preservation there is much pottery, including vessels of simple 

 earthenware and enamelled faience, enamelled and sculptured terra- 

 cotta, glass, often resembling Venetian, metal work and jewellery, 

 and linen cloth as fine as Indian muslin. Verschoyle. 



