676 Professor Tyndall [Jan. 22, 



Young's favour, even prior to his final and triumphant vindication by 

 Fresnel. 



From this time forward inscriptions of all kinds were sent to 

 Young for discussion or interpretation. They were found in numbers 

 among his papers after his death.* 



It was a mind thus endowed and thus disciplined that now turned 

 to the task of deciphering the hieroglyphics of Egypt. The more 

 immediate cause of his grappling with this formidable but fascinating 

 subject was the finding by Sir W. Kouse Boughton, in a mummy-case at 

 Thebes, of a papyrus in Egyptian running hand, fragments of which, 

 after serious injury to the manuscript, fell into the hands of Young. 

 To Sir W. Boughton's communication to the Antiquarian Society, 

 Young appended a short notice, the chief significance of which is the 

 relation in which it stands to his subsequent researches. An adum- 

 bration of these, which must, under the circumstances, be weak and 

 faint, I will endeavour to bring before you. 



The famous Kosetta stone was discovered by the French in Egypt 

 in 1799. It bore three inscriptions : the first, hieroglyphical or 

 sacred ; the second Enchorial f — a name given by Young to the 

 common language employed by the Egyptians in the time of the 

 Ptolemies ; and the third Greek. At the end are given the following 

 directions : — " What is here decreed shall be engraved on a block of 

 hard stone, in sacred, in native, and in Greek characters, and placed 



* " In the 19th volume of the ' Archaeologia,' " says Young's biographer, " we 

 find an interesting notice of a fragment of a very ancient papyrus, as well as 

 several curious but somewhat barbarous sepulchral inscriptions of a late age from 

 Nubia, which were submitted to him by Lord Mountnorris. In the Appendix to 

 Captain's Light's Travels in Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, and Cyprus, he furnished 

 translations and restorations of several Greek inscriptions ; and when Barrow 

 gave an account in the • Quarterly Keview ' of recent researches in Egypt, more 

 especially those of Caviglia on the Great Sphinx, it was from Young that he ob- 

 tained the restoration of the inscription on the second digit of the great paw." 

 In the 3rd volume of Young's Works, this inscription, taken from the 19th volume 

 of the ' Quarterly Keview,' is given, with translations into modern Greek, Latin, 

 and English. The last-mentioned runs thus : — 



" Thy form stupendous here the gods have placed. 



Sparing each spot of harvest-bearing land; 

 And with this mighty work of art have graced 



A rocky isle, encumber'd once with sand ; 



And near the Pyramids have bid thee stand : 

 Not that fierce Sphinx that Thebes erewhile laid waste, 



But great Latona's servant mild and bland ; 

 Watching that prince beloved who fills the tlirone 

 Of Egypt's plains, and calls the Nile his own. 

 That heavenly monarch [who his foes defies], 

 Like Vulcan powerful [and like Pallas wisej." 



t Called in the Greek "Enchoria grammata," or letters of the country. 

 Young deprecates the introduction, afterwards, by Champollion, of the term 

 " Demotic," or popular. 



