Memoir of Dr. Thomas Young. 329 



The signs thus preserved by Horapollon form only a very 

 small portion of the 800 or 900 characters which are found 

 on monumental inscriptions. The moderns, Kircher among 

 others, have attempted to increase their number. Their 

 efforts have uot led to any useful result, unless to shew 

 into what errors the best informed men may be led when 

 they abandon themselves without restraint to their imagi- 

 nation. From the absence of date, the interpretation of the 

 Egyptian inscriptions appeared, for a long time, to all 

 thinking men, an absolutely insoluble problem ; when, in 

 1799, M. Boussard, a talented officer, found in the trenches 

 which he had formed about Rosetta, a large stone covered 

 with three series of perfectly distinct characters. One of 

 these series was Greek. This, notwithstanding some muti- 

 lations, afforded the information, that those who had ordered 

 the monument to be raised had enjoined that the same in- 

 scription should be delineated in three characters, viz., in 

 sacred characters or Egyptian hieroglyphics, in local or 

 common characters and in Greek. Thus, by a fortunate 

 accident, philologists were presented with a Greek text 

 with its translation into the Egyptian language, or, at least, 

 a transcription with the two sorts of characters employed 

 on the banks of the Nile. 



This Rosetta tablet, which has since become so celebrated, 

 and which M. Boussard presented to the Institute of Cairo, 

 was carried off when the French army evacuated Egypt. 

 It may now be seen in the British Museum at London, 

 " where it figures," says Thomas Young, " as a monument 

 of British valour." Laying aside the idea of valour, the 

 celebrated philosopher might have added, without exhibit- 

 ing too much partiality, that this bi-lingual monument bore 

 witness, in some small degree, of the enlightened views 

 which had presided over all the details of the memorable 

 Expedition to Egypt, and also of the indefatigable zeal of 

 the illustrious philosophers, whose labours often executed 

 under the fire of grape-shot, have added so much to the 

 glory of their country. The importance of the Rosetta in- 

 scription struck them so forcibly, that, rather than abandon 

 this precious treasure to the dangers of a sea-voyage, they 

 set themselves about producing representations of the 

 original by copper-plates, and lastly, by plaster and sul- 

 phur casts. It may be added, that the antiquarians of 



