330 Analysis of Books, fyc. 



review of Adelung's Mithridates, Vol. X., October, 1813. This is 

 remarkable, as it was the immediate means of leading him to the 

 investigation of the lost literature of Ancient Egypt. The account 

 of his discoveries on this subject is given in the words of his 

 biographer, because an unjust attempt has been made to wrest from 

 Dr. Young the merit of having first discovered a key to the hiero- 

 glyphics. 



' In the year 1814, Sir William Rouse Boughton had brought with him 

 from Egypt some fragments of papyri, which he put into the hands of 

 Dr. Young ; the fragment of the Rosetta Stone having about this time 

 been deposited in the British Museum, and a correct copy of its three 

 inscriptions having been engraved and circulated by the Society of Anti- 

 quaries. Dr. Young first proceeded to examine the Enchorial Inscrip- 

 tion, and afterwards the sacred characters ; and, after a minute compa- 

 rison of these documents, he was enabled to attach some " Remarks on 

 Egyptian Papyri, and on the Inscription of Rosetta," containing an 

 interpretation of the principal parts of both ihe Egyptian inscriptions 

 on the pillar, to a paper of Sir William Boughton's which was published 

 by the Society of Antiquaries in 1815, in the 18th volume of the Ar- 

 chaeologia. 



' Dr. Young now found that he had discovered a key to the lost lite- 

 rature of Ancient Egypt. He had occupied himself, though without de- 

 riving from it tbe assistance he at first expected, in the study of the 

 Coptic and Thebaic versions of the Scriptures ; but having satisfied him- 

 self of the nature and origin of the Enchorial character, he produced the 

 result to the world anonymously in the Museum Criticum of Cambridge, 

 part vi., published in 1815 ; being then determined to prosecute the dis- 

 covery, but at the same time abstaining from claiming it in a more sub- 

 stantive form, from the resolution he had previously taken to be known 

 only as a medical author. 



* The labour he bestowed on these investigations, and the minuteness 

 and accuracy with which he copied the papyri and compared the 

 materials which came into his hands, would be nearly incredible to those 

 who had not access to him whilst employed on this pursuit. 



* In 1816, he printed and circulated two additional letters relating to 

 his hieroglyphical discoveries and the inscription of Rosetta ; the first 

 addressed to the Archduke John of Austria, who had recently been in 

 this country, the other to M. Akerblad. These letters announce the pro- 

 gress of the discovery of the relation between the Egyptian characters 

 and hieroglyphics, forming the basis on which Dr. Young continued his 

 inquiries, as well as of the system afterwards carried further in its details 

 by M. Champollion, whose attention had long been directed to similar 

 studies, and in which he has since so greatly distinguished himself. The 

 letters were first published when reprinted in the seventh number of the 

 Museum Criticum, in 1821 ; and were, with the former letters in that 

 work, beyond all question or dispute, the earliest announcement of the 

 discovery of a key to a character which had remained uninterpreted for 

 ages.' 



The whole results of his discoveries on this subject were first 

 brought out in a perfect and concentrated form in the article EGYPT, 

 published in the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to 

 which work Dr. Young furnished sixty-three articles, scientific, bio- 



