1886.] on Thomas Young. 579 



until they reached the stage corresponding to the Enchorial inscription 

 of the Eosetta stone, " which," says Young, " resembled in its general 

 appearance the most unpicturesque of these manuscripts." Long 

 before the time of Young, learned men had tried their hands on the 

 Eosetta characters, but no relationship like that here indicated had 

 ever been discerned. 



Pre-eminent among the Egyptologists of that time was the cele- 

 brated Champollion, librarian at Grenoble. In his very first reference 

 to Champollion, Dean Peacock speaks thus of the illustrious French- 

 man : — " He had made the history, the toj)ography, and antiquities of 

 Egypt, as well as the Coptic language and its kindred dialects, the 

 study of his life, and he started therefore upon this inquiry with 

 advantages that probably no other person possessed ; and no one who 

 is acquainted with his later writings can call in doubt his extraor- 

 dinary sagacity in bringing to bear upon every subject connected with 

 it, not merely the most apposite, but also the most remote, and some- 

 times the most unexpected, illustrations." Thus equipped, however, 

 Champollion made next to no progress before the advent of Young. 

 " With the exception," says Peacock, " of the identification of a few 

 additional Coptic words, very ingeniously elicited from the Egyptian 

 text, he made no imjDortant advance on what had already been done 

 by Akerblad. Like him, also, he abandoned the task of identifying 

 the hieroglyphical inscription, or portions of it, with those cor- 

 responding to them in the Egyptian or Greek text, as altogether 

 hopeless, in consequence of the very extensive mutilations which it 

 had undergone." 



Young, however, had determined about 90 or 100 characters of 

 the mutilated hieroglyphic inscription (the funeral papyri enabled 

 him afterwards to more than double the number), and these suflSced 

 to prove, " first, that many simple objects were represented by their 

 actual delineations ; secondly, that many other objects, represented 

 graphically, were used in a figurative sense only, while a great 

 number of the symbols, in frequent use, could be considered as the 

 pictures of no existing objects whatever; thirdly, that a dual was 

 denoted by a repetition of the character, but that three characters of 

 the same kind following each other implied an indefinite plurality, 

 more compendiously represented by three lines or bars attached to a 

 single character; fourthly, that definite numbers were expressed by 

 dashes for units, and arches, either round or square, for tens ; fifthly, 

 that all hieroglyphic inscriptions were read from front to rear, as 

 the objects naturally follow each other ; sixthly, that proper names 

 were included by the oval ring, or border, or cartouche ; * and 

 seventhly, that the name of Ptolemy alone existed on this pillar, 

 having only been completely identified by help of the analysis of the 

 Enchorial inscription. And," adds Young, " as far as I have ever 



* Young's editor adds here, *' The discovery was long afterwards made by 

 Champollion that the cartouches were confined to the names of royal personages." 



