EULOGY ON THOMAS YOUNG. 131 



find on one hand the lively discussion to which the age of these monu- 

 ments had given rise completely terminated ; on the other, we observe 

 it established beyond question that under the Eoman dominion hiero- 

 glyphics were still in full use on the bauks of the Nile. 



The alphabet which had given such unhoped-for results, whether 

 applied to the great obelisks at Karnac, or to other monuments which 

 are also recognized as being of the age of the Pharaohs, presents to us 

 the names of many other kings of this ancient race ; the names of 

 Egyi)tian deities; we can say more, substantives, adjectives, and verbs 

 of the Coptic language. Young was then deceived when he regarded 

 the i)honetic hieroglyphics as a modern invention ; when he advanced 

 that they served solely for the transcription of proper names foreign to 

 Egypt. M. de Guignes, and, above all, M. Etieune Quatremere estab- 

 lished, on the coutiary, a real fact, and one of great importance — that 

 the reading of the inscrii>tions of the Pharaohs is corroborated by irresist- 

 ible proofs, while they show that the existing Coptic language was that 

 of the ancient subjects of Sesostris. 



We now know the facts. I may, then, confine myself to confirm, by 

 a few short observations, the consequences which apjiear to me to result 

 from them. 



Discussions of priority, even under the dominion of national preju- 

 dices, will have become embittered if they can be reduced to fixed rules ; 

 but in certain cases the first idea is everything ; in others, the details offer 

 the chief difficulties; sometimes the merit seems to consist less in the 

 conception of a theory than in its demonstration. We then infer how 

 much the choice of a particular point of view must depend on arbitrary 

 conditions; and, lastly, how much influence it will have on the definite 

 conclusion. To escape from these embarrassments, 1 have sought an 

 example in which the parts respectively played by two rival claimants 

 for an invention may be assimilated to those of Champollion and Young, 

 and Avhich has, on the other hand, united all opinions. This example, 

 1 believe, 1 have found in the interferences, even leaving out of the ques- 

 tion, as regards the subject of the hieroglyphics, the quotations from the 

 memoir of M. de Guignes. It is as follows : Hooke, in fact, had an- 

 nounced, before Dr. Young, that luminous rays interfered, just as the latter 

 had asserted, before Champollion, that the Egyptian hieroglyphics are 

 sometimes phonetic. Hooke did not prove directly his hypothesis ; the 

 l)roof of the phonetic values assigned by Young to different hieroglyphics 

 could only rest on readings which had not, as yet, been made, and which 

 could not then be made. From want of knowing the composition of 

 white light, Hooke had not an exact idea of the nature of interferences, 

 as Young on his part deceived himself by an imagined syllabic or dis- 

 syllabic value of hieroglyphics. Young, by unanimous consent, is 

 regarded as the author of the theory of interferences. Thence, by a 

 parity of reasoning which seems to me inevitable, Champollion ought 

 to be regarded as the author of the discovery of hieroglyphics. 



I regret not to have sooner thought of this comparison. If, in his 

 lifetime, Young had been placed in the alternative of being the origina- 

 tor of the doctrine of interferences, leaving the hieroglyphics to Cham- 

 pollion, or to keep the hieroglyphics, giving up to Hooke the ingenious 

 optical theory, I do not doubt he would have felt obliged to recognize 

 the claims of our ilkistrious fellow-countryman. At all events, there 

 woidd have remained with him what no one could have contested, the 

 right to appear in the history of the memorable discovery of the inter- 

 pretation of hieroglyphics in the same relative position as that in which 



