Memoir of Dr. Thomas Young. 331 



shewn that the Egyptian cartouches contained all the 

 proper names. In the same memoir also, any one may 

 see the arguments which this accomplished oriental scholar 

 employs to establish the opinion which he had embraced 

 with respect to the constant phonetic nature of the Egyptian 

 hieroglyphics. Young has, however, the priority upon one 

 single point, for he made the first trial to decompose the 

 groups of cartouches into letters, in order to give phonetic 

 value to the hieroglyphics composing the name of Ptolemy 

 in the Rosette tablet. 



In this investigation as might be expected, Young fur- 

 nished new proofs of his great penetration ; but misled by a 

 false system his efforts could not be completely successful. 

 Thus, he sometimes attributed a simply alphabetical cha- 

 racter, at other times a syllabic, or even a dissyllabic value 

 without accounting for this remarkable mixture in characters 

 of different kinds. The fragment of the alphabet published 

 by Dr. Young contains, therefore, truths and errors ; but 

 the faults abound so much that it would be impossible to 

 apply the meaning of the letters to any other inscription 

 than to that of the two proper names from which they were 

 derived. The word impossible so rarely occurred in the 

 scientific career of Young that we must hasten to justify 

 ourselves. I state, therefore, that since the composition of 

 his alphabet, Young believed that he had read on an Egyp- 

 tian monument the word Arsinoe, which his celebrated 

 competitor has since clearly proved to be Autocrator, and 

 that he read Evergete in a group instead of Ccesar. 



The work of Chompollion, in reference to the phonetic 

 value of the hieroglyphics, is simple and homogeneous, and 

 does not appear to lead to any uncertainty. Each sign is 

 equivalent to a simple vowel or a simple consonant ; its 

 value is not arbitrary ; every phonetic hieroglyphic repre- 

 sents a physical object, the name of which, in the Egyptian 

 language, begins with the vowel or consonant which it 

 represents. 



The alphabet of Chompollion once modelled from the 

 Rosetta tablet, and from two or three other monuments 

 serves for reading inscriptions entirely different ; for ex- 

 ample, the name Cleopatra on the obelisk of Philoe carried 

 sometime ago to England, and where Dr. Young, provided 



