292 TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



vant universally known for his valuable publications, remonstrated 

 in another public lecture. In consequence of the latter the fol- 

 lowing deceptive statements appeared in the said N. Y. Staats- 

 zeitung. 



1. The Tanis-stone demonstrates that Champollion's hiero- 

 glyphic system is the key to the Egyptian literature. Qiiod non ! 

 For Lepsius could not translate 440 hieroglyphic articles of this 

 bilingual inscription. He misunderstood the most simple groups 

 and brought out a mass of absurdities and monster words (p. 277). 

 The translation of the same inscription made by Reinisch, follow- 

 ing the same system, totally differs from Lepsius (p. 285). The 

 afore-mentioned translation of the Pompeian Tablet, made accord- 

 ino- to Champollion, is the non plus ultra of nonsense. Neverthe- 

 less Evers has the effrontery to repeat that Champollion is "the 

 o-reat decipherer of the hieroglyphs," and the like, without men- 

 tioning that he never succeeded in translating the Rosetta-stone. 



2. It is true that without assuming syllabic hieroglyphs it is 

 impracticable to interpret entire hieroglyphic texts ; but this 

 discovery was made not by Champollion or Lepsius, as Ebers 

 insinuates, but by another. It is a fraud that Champollion in his 

 "Grammar" (1832) or Lepsius in his "Lettre a Rosellini" (1837) 

 first of all discovered syllabic hieroglyphs; for in 1824, whilst 

 paralleling the different copies of the sacred Egyptian Records 

 with each other and word for word, at Berlin, the writer discov- 

 ered that the Egyptians sometimes expressed the sparrow-hawk 

 bvJihe letters kr^ and this fact demonstrates that the former 

 syllabically expressed the letters kr. The writer's " Rudimenta 

 Hieroglyphices" (1826, p. 25, § 16) clearly distinguishes alpha- 

 iDetic and syllabic hieroglyphs, and in the same work the first 12 

 syllabic glyphs were produced. The reason why the Egyptians 

 expressed two consonants by one image, it is true, was then erro- 

 neously explained ; but afterwards in 1844 (Leipziger Reperto- 

 rium, Aug. 8 ; Verhandlungen der ersten Versamlung Deut. 

 Orientalisten, 1845, p. 65) it c.une to light that regularly each 

 hierocrlyphic image signified the two or three consonants con- 

 tained in the name of the figure. See the writer's G.yE. p. xxxii. 

 Nobody before 1826 & 1833 (Ast.^E:g.) had discovered the syllabic 

 signification of the hieroglyphs, and yet Ebers does not hesitate 

 to say that Lepsius discovered the first syllabic hieroglyphs in 



