HIEROGLYPHICAL EESEAECHES. 295 



chorial with the hieroglyph ical. About half the lines 

 of the latter were obliterated, and the rest were con- 

 siderably defaced. Towards the ends, however, both 

 inscriptions were fairly well preserved ; and these were 

 the portions subjected to the scrutiny of Young. 

 Making allowance for the differences of space occupied 

 by the two inscriptions, and measuring from the final 

 words of the inscription proportional distances, de- 

 termined by the Enchorial characters for God, King, 

 Priest and Shrine, the meaning of which had been 

 well established, Young sought at the places indicated 

 by these measurements for the corresponding hiero- 

 glyphics. He soon found that Shrine and Priest were 

 denoted by pictures of the things themselves. The 

 other terms, God and King, were still more easily 

 ascertained, from their situation near the name of 

 Ptolemy. Having thus fixed his points of orientation, 

 Young placed them side by side, and subjected the 

 characters lying between them to a searching com- 

 parison. He offers in his article of 1819 the last line 

 of the sacred characters, with the corresponding parts 

 of the other inscriptions, as a ' fair specimen of the 

 result that has been attained from these operations.' 



Up to the time of which we now speak, although 

 profoundly learned men had attempted to decipher the 

 funeral papyri of Egypt, if we omit the labours of 

 Young, very little progress had been made in this 

 direction ; while in regard to the decipherment of the 

 hieroglyphics nothing had been done. 



A vast extension of our knowledge of Egyptian 

 writing is to be ascribed to the following accident. 

 An Italian named Cassati had brought to Paris several 

 manuscripts from Upper Egypt. One was written ex- 

 actly in the Enchorial character of the second inscrip- 



