M. Arago on the Egyptian Hieroglyphkal Writings. 45 



lion. Immediately after this, Dr Young asserted that all 

 the symbols included in the frame or cartouche, did not re- 

 present ideas, but sounds ; finally, he endeavoured, by a minute 

 and very delicate analysis, to assign an individual hieroglyphic 

 character to each of the sounds the ear perceives in the name 

 Ptolemy on the pillar of Rosetta, and also in that of Bernice, 

 which he found upon another inscription. 



Such then were, if I do not deceive myself, in the researches 

 of Young into the Egyptian systems of writing, the three 

 grand points. No one, we have said above, had previously dis- 

 covered them, or, at all events, had pointed them out previous 

 to the English physician. This opinion, though generally ad- 

 mitted, I regard doubtful. In truth, it is certain, that as 

 early as the year 1766, M. de Guignes, in a printed memoir, 

 had pointed out that the cartouches of the Egyptian inscriptions 

 all enclosed proper names. Every one may also see, in the 

 same work, the arguments which this learned Orientalist em- 

 ployed to establish the opinion which he had embraced, regard- 

 ing the constant phonetic character of the Egyptian hierogly- 

 phics. Young, therefore, has the priority only upon a single 

 point ; being the first who attempted to decompose into letters 

 the encircled groups, that he might give a phonetic value to 

 the hieroglyphics in the Rosetta pillar composing the name of 

 Ptolemy. 



In this investigation, as may be supposed, Dr Young fur- 

 nished new proofs of his extraordinary penetration ; but, misled 

 by a false system, his endeavours were not crowned with entire 

 success. Thus, sometimes he attributed to the hieroglyphic 

 characters a value which was simply alphabetic, or of a single 

 letter ; then he would assign to them the value of a whole sylla- 

 ble, or even of two syllables, without troubling himself with the 

 strangeness of this mixture of characters so different in their 

 nature. The fragment of the alphabet published by Dr Young, 

 contains both what is true and what is false ; but the false so 

 much superabounds in it, that it would be impossible to apply 

 the significancy of the letters of which it is composed, to the 

 reading of any thing else than the two proper names from which 

 it was derived. The word impossible, however, is so rarely ap- 

 plicablc to the scientific career of Young, that I hasten to prove 



