255 
Art. II. Letters relating to Mr. CHamPoxuion’s Dis- 
coveries in Lgyptian Literature. 
Letrer I, To Witt1am Hamttton, Esq., F.R.S., H.M, 
Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Naples. 
My dear Sir, Paris, 29th Sept. 1822. 
* * * JT have found here, or rather recovered, Mr. Cham- 
pollion, junior, who has been living for these ten years on the 
Inscription of Rosetta, and who has lately been making some 
steps in Egyptian literature, which really appear to be gigantic. 
It may be said that he found the key in England which has 
opened the gate for him, and it is often observed that c’est le 
premer pas qui coiite; but if he did borrow an English key, the 
lock was so dreadfully rusty, that no common arm would have 
had strength enough to turn it; and in a path so beset with 
thorns, and so encumbered with rubbish, not the first step only, 
but every step, is painfully laborious; especially such as are 
retrograde; and such steps will sometimes be necessary: but 
it is better to make a few false steps than to stand quite still. 
If Mr. Champollion’s latest conjectures become confirmed by 
collateral evidence, which I dare say you will not think im- 
possible, he will have the merit of setting the chronology of the 
later Egyptian monuments entirely at rest. Beginning with the 
few hieroglyphics to which I had assigned a “ phonetic” significa- 
tion, he found reason to conclude that, in the days of the 
Greeks and Romans at least, a considerable number of different 
characters were employed for expressing hieroglyphically the 
letters composing a foreign proper name ; the initial letter only 
of the Egyptian name of the object being denoted by the cha- 
racter ; so that the names intended become a sort of acrosticks, 
or rather acrolexics ; and the writing, instead of syllabic, as it 
may have been in older times, became strictly alphabetical, 
though somewhat vague in its orthography. Besides the names 
of Ptolemy and Berenice, which he reads as I have done, though 
with some slight alterations, and with several varieties of form; 
he makes out, with more or less latitude, those of Alexander, 
Arsinoe, Cleopatra, Caesar, Autocrator, Sebastus, Tiberius 
