SEYFFARTH EGYPTIAN THEOLOGY. 73 



The principal argument, however, is that from 1S24 down to this 

 day none of the Champollionists succeeded in grammatically and 

 logically interpreting any, either bilingual or not bilingual, entire 

 Egyptian text. For in 1S45, 21 years after the publication of 

 Champollion's Preces, Bunsen (^^gyptens Stellung in der Welt- 

 geschichte, vol. i. p. 320), in accordance with Lepsius and Birch, 

 came out with the following declaration : "We declare decidedly 

 that there is not a man alive who could read and explain [accord- 

 ing to Champollion's system] any whole section of the [Turin] 

 Book of the Dead, much less a historical papyrus." — Champol- 

 lion himself, although repeatedly challenged to verify his theory 

 by a translation of the Rosetta-stone, never succeeded in explain- 

 ing it. — Brugsch, indeed, published in 1851 an interpretation of 

 the Rosetta, but he could not do it without deserting Champol- 

 lion's standard, and clandestinely applying my syllabic hiero- 

 glyphs. Moreover, this work diflers very much from Uhlemann's 

 "Interpretatio Rosettanai," 1853. (See Leipziger Repertorium, 

 1S52, p. 26 ; 1S53, p. 27S.) — Further, in 1851 Rouge's "Memoire" 

 appeared, in which he honestly confessed "que la traduction des 

 ces lignes eut ete impossible dans I'etat ou Champollion a laisse 

 la science egyptienne"; but he cunningly concealed that his trans- 

 lation was based upon my syllabic alphabet, of which a copy was 

 given to him by his friend Brugsch at Berlin. (See Leipziger 

 Repert. 1853, p. 155.) —Again, in 1866 Lepsius's interpretation 

 of the Tanis-stone made its appearance, but, alas ! a great deal 

 of the text remained inexplicable, although he availed himself of 

 my theory and syllabic hieroglyphs. By the way, in the same 

 year Reinisch's " Zweisprachige Inschrift von Tanis" came out, 

 and this translation, made according to the same " key," totally 

 disagrees with Lepsius. The latter promised, eleven years ago, 

 to publish a commentary to his translation of the Tanis-stone, 

 and yet this commentary never appeared, and never will come 

 out, because it was and is impracticable to comment on a trans- 

 lation proceeding from a wrong theory. Finally, the fact is 

 obvious that any Egyptian inscription, if translated according to 

 Champollion's statements, yields the greatest absurdities, as 

 Champollion's "Grammar and Dictionary," Brugsch's " Rosetta- 

 na," De Rouges "Memoire," Lepsius's "Tanis-stone," the publi- 



