loU EULOGY ON. THOMAS YOUNG. 



tems of the Egyptians, the tliree culmiuating pomts. No one, it is said, 

 had pt^rceived them, or at least had ])ointed them out before the Eng- 

 lish philosopher. This opinion, althongh generally admitted, appears to 

 me open to dispnte. It is, in fact, certain that in 17GC M. de Guignes, 

 in a printed memoir, had indicated that the scrolls in Egyptian in- 

 scriptions included all the proper names. Every one might also see 

 in the same work the arguments on which the learned orientalist relied 

 to establish the opinion which he had embraced on the constant pho- 

 netic character of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Young, then, has the 

 priority on this point alone. To him belongs the first attempt which 

 had been made to decompose in letters the groups of the scrolls, to give 

 a iihonetic value to the hieroglyphics which composed in the stone of 

 Rosetta the name of Ptolemy. In this research, as we might expect. 

 Young furnished new proofs of his immense penetration ; but, mislead 

 by a false system, his efforts had not a full success. Thus sometimes 

 he attributes to the hieroglyphic characters a value sim])ly alphabetical. 

 Further on he gives them a value which is syllabic or dissyllabic, with- 

 out being struck by what must seem so strange in this mixture of dif- 

 ferent characters. The fragment of an alphabet published by Y^oung 

 includes, then, something both of truth and falsehood, but the false 

 so much abounds that it would be impossible to apply the value of let- 

 ters which compose it to any other reading than that of the two proi^er 

 names from which it was derived. The word impossible is so rarely met 

 with in the scientific career of Y^oung, that I must hasten to justify it. 

 I will say, then, that after the composition of his alphabet Young him- 

 self believed that he saw in the scroll of an Egyptian monument the 

 name of " Amuoe," where his celebrated competitor had since shown 

 with irresistible evidence the word " awtocrator; " that he believed he 

 had found " mergetes " in a group where we ought to read '■'■Ccvsar.'''' 



The labors of Ohampollion, as to the discovery of the phonetic value 

 of hieroglyphics, are clear, distinct, and cannot involve any doubt. 

 Each sign is equivalent to a single vowel or consonant. Its value is 

 not arbitrary. Every phonetic hieroglyphic is the image of a physical 

 object whose name in the Egyptian language commences with the vowel 

 or the consonant which it is wished to represent.* 



The alphabet of Champolliou, once modeled from the stone of Rosetta 

 and two or three other moiumients, enables us to read inscriptions en- 

 tirely different ; for example, the name of Cleopatra on the obelisk of 

 Philoi^, long ago transported into England, and where Dr. Y'oung, 

 armed with his alphabet, could discover nothing. On the temple of 

 Karnac, Champolliou read twice the name of Alexander; on the Zodiac 

 of Denderah, the title of a Roman emperor; on the grand edifice above 

 which it is placed, the names and surnames of the emperors Augustus, 

 Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Domitian, «&c. Thus, to speak briefly, we 



* This will become clear to every one, if we seek,- by following the Egyptian system, 

 to compose liieroglypbics iu the French language. A may bo represented by (afjnean) 

 a lamb, {alglc,) an eagle, an ass, anemone, artichoke, &c. ; B, by a balance, a whale, 

 (baleine,) a boat, »Stc. ; C, by cahana, (Mdc/er,) cheml, (horse,) cat, cedar, &c. ; E, by 

 dpic, (a sword,) elephant, epagneul, (spaniel,) &c. Abhe, then, would be written in 

 French hieroglyphics by putting any of the following figures in succession : A larali, 

 a balance, a whale, au elephant ; or an eagle, a boat, a sword, &c. This kind of writ- 

 ing has some analogy, as we sec, with the rebus in which confectioners wrap their hon- 

 bons. Thus we see at what stage these Egyptian priests were, of whom antiquity has 

 so much boasted, but who, we must say, have taught us so little. 



M. Champolliou calls homophones all those signs which, rejiresenting the same sound 

 or the same articulation, can be substituted indifferently for each other. In the actual 

 state of the Egyptian alphabet I perceive six or seven homophone signs fo'- A and 

 more than twelve i^r the Greek sigma. — Arago. 



