294 THOMAS YOUNG. 



article in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' was written 

 for ordinary readers, rather than for critics or learned 

 men. In this article, however, we are allowed a 

 glimpse of Young's mode of collating and comparing 

 the different inscriptions. He looks at the Enchorial 

 inscription, and notices certain recurrent groups of 

 characters ; he looks at the Greek inscription, and 

 finds there words with the same, or approximately the 

 same, periods of recurrence. Thus, ' a small group of 

 characters occurring very often, in almost every line, 

 might be either some termination, or some very com- 

 mon particle ; it must therefore be reserved till it is 

 found in some decisive situation, after some other words 

 have been identified, and it will then easily be shown 

 to mean and. The next remarkable collection of 

 characters is repeated twenty-nine or thirty times in 

 the Enchorial inscription ; and we find nothing that 

 occurs so often in the Greek, except the word king. . . . 

 A fourth assemblage of characters is found fourteen 

 times in the Enchorial inscription, agreeing sufficiently 

 well in frequency with the name of Ptolemy. . . . 

 By a similar comparison, the name of Egypt is iden- 

 tified. . . . Having thus,' says Young, ' obtained a 

 sufficient number of common points of subdivision, we 

 next proceed to write the Greek text over the Encho- 

 rial, in such a manner that the passages ascertained 

 may all coincide as nearly as possible ; and it is ob- 

 vious that the intermediate parts of each inscription 

 will then stand very near to the corresponding passages 

 of the other. . . . By pursuing the comparison of 

 the inscriptions thus arranged, we ultimately discover 

 the signification of the greater part of the individual 

 Enchorial words.' 



Having thus compared the Greek text with the 

 Enchorial, Young next proceeded to compare the En- 



