578 Professor Tyndall [Jan. 22, 



" I had thought it necessary," says Young, in an essay written to 

 clear the air on this and various other points some years afterwards, 

 " to make myself in some measure familiar with the remains of the 

 old Egyptian language as they are preserved in the Coptic and 

 Thebaic versions of the Scriptures ; and I had hoped, with the assist- 

 ance of this knowledge, to be able to find an alphabet which would 

 enable me to read the Enchorial inscription, at least into a kindred 

 dialect. But in the progress of the investigation I had gradually 

 been compelled to abandon this expectation, and to admit the con- 

 viction that no such alphabet would ever be discovered, because it 

 had never been in existence. 



" I was led to this conclusion, not only by the untractable nature 

 of the inscription itself, which might have depended on my own want 

 of information and address, but still more decidedly by the manifest 

 occurrence of a multitude of characters which were obviously imper- 

 fect imitations of the more intelligible pictures that were observable 

 among the distinct hieroglyphics of the first inscription, such as a 

 Priest, a Statue, a Mattock, or Plough, which were evidently, in their 

 primitive state, delineations of the objects intended to be denoted by 

 them, and which were, as evidently, introduced among the Enchorial 

 characters." 



Young, as we have seen, had begun his labours on the Rosetta 

 stone in May 1814, and in the month of August he was able to 

 announce to Mr. Gurney his discovery that some of the Enchorial 

 characters were hieroglyphics. Prior to Young, no human being had 

 dreamt of the transfer of the characters of the first inscription to the 

 second. The first was pictural and symbolic; the second, to all 

 appearance, a purely alphabetical running hand. It had always been 

 regarded in this light. By means of the funeral papyri Young still 

 further established the relationship between the first and second 

 inscriptions. In 1816 he obtained from Mr. William Hamilton a 

 loan of the noble work entitled ' Description de I'Egypte,' in which 

 were carefully published several of the papyrus manuscripts. Many 

 of the inscriptions dealt with the same text, and by comparing them 

 one with another Young was able to trace the gradual departure from 

 the original hieroglyphic characters. Probably with a view to more 

 rapid writing, these had passed through various phases of degradation, 



I'Ecriture Hieratique des Anciens Egyptiens,' published at Grenoble in 1821. 

 .... This memoir contained several plates in which the hieroglyphic and 

 hieratic characters are compared, on the same plan as Dr. Young's specimens in 

 the ' Encyclopedia Britannica,' published in 1819. He sent a copy of them to 

 Dr. Young, but withheld the letterpress. Dr. Young accordingly remained for 

 several years under the impression that tliis work had been published at a much 

 earlier period." Writing to Sir William Gell in 1827, in reference to this point. 

 Young remarks, " I never knew till now how much later his publication was, for 

 he gave it to me without the text." The publication was Cliampollion's 

 ' Comparative Table of Hieroglyphics,' " containing," says Young, •* what I had 

 published in 1816," five years earlier. 



