292 THOMAS YOUNG. 



ably no other person possessed ; and no one who is 

 acquainted with his later writings can call in doubt his 

 extraordinary sagacity in bringing to bear upon every 

 subject connected with it, not merely the most appo- 

 site, but also the most remote, and sometimes the most 

 unexpected, illustrations.' Thus equipped, however, 

 Champollion made next to no progress before the ad- 

 vent of Young. 'With the exception,' says Peacock, 

 6 of the identification of a few additional Coptic words, 

 very ingeniously elicited from the Egyptian text, he 

 made no important advance on what had already been 

 done by Akerblad. Like him, also, he abandoned the 

 task of identifying the hieroglyphical inscription, or 

 portions of it, with those corresponding to them in the 

 Egyptian or Greek text, as altogether hopeless, in con- 

 sequence of the very extensive mutilations which it 

 had undergone.' 



Young, however, had determined about ninety or 

 one hundred characters of the mutilated hieroglyphic 

 inscription (the funeral papyri enabled him afterwards 

 to more than double the number), and these sufficed 

 to prove, * first, that many simple objects were repre- 

 sented by their actual delineations ; secondly, that 

 many other objects, represented graphically, were used 

 in a figurative sense only, while a great number of the 

 symbols, in frequent use, could be considered as the 

 pictures of no existing objects whatever; thirdly, that 

 a dual was denoted by a repetition of the character, 

 but that three characters of the same kind following 

 each other implied an indefinite plurality, more com- 

 pendiously represented by three lines or bars attached 

 to a single character ; fourthly, that definite numbers 

 were expressed by dashes for units, and arches, either 

 round or square, for tens ; fifthly, that all hieroglyphic 

 inscriptions were read from front to rear, as the ob- 



