in Egyptian Laterature. 257 
yet made out which are the months represented by the respec- 
tive characters. He has also been so fortunate as to discover a 
mummy manuscript, in which some of the chapters are dis- 
tinguished by numbers, inserted in the first line of each: they 
confirm and complete the series, which I had before collected, 
from various documents, in the enchorial character. 
You will easily believe, that were I ever so much the victim of 
the bad passions, I should feel nothing but exultation at Mr. 
Champollion’s success: my life seems indeed to be lengthened 
by the accession of a junior coadjutor in my researches, and of 
a person too, who is so much more versed in the different dia- 
lects of the Egyptian language than myself. I sincerely wish 
that his merits may be as highly appreciated by his countrymen, 
and by their government, as they ought: and I do not see how 
he can fail of being considered as possessing an undeniable 
claim to an early admission into any literary society, that may 
have a place vacant for his reception. I have promised him 
every assistance in his researches that I can procure him in 
England, and [ hope in return to obtain from him an early com- 
munication of all his future observations. 
Of my own I have little or nothing very new to tell you, ex- 
cept that I satisfied myself the other day of what I had long 
suspected, that our antiquaries were totally mistaken in sup- 
posing the character L, denoting year, to be derived from the 
avxaBas of Homer, and that it is in fact merely a variety of the 
hieroglyphical character 1 , which is the emblem generally 
employed in that sense: for I observed on a tablet, which has 
been let into the base of a statue in the gallery of the Louvre, 
the first column beginning with the date nnL, “ the twentieth 
year,” of King Ptolemy, while another column has the same 
date, in the form nn, as usual. Pray mention this to the 
Duc de Blacas, with my best compliments. I shall probably be 
able to send you, in the course of the winter, another number 
of the “ Hieroglyphics,” as I do not mean to wait any longer 
for Drovetti: it is to include some communications from Cham- 
pollion, and perhaps acomparison of his explanation of the Rosetta 
Inscriptions with my own; he seems to haye cen at least more 
Vou, XIV. s 
