Vol. XXIV. No. 3.] 
POPULAR SCIE^^CE NEWS. 
liandles being of wood. Clasps for belts or heavj 
garments are massive, beautifully chased, and 
handsome. The buttons show, among other varie- 
ties of shape, that of the double or cuff-button of 
our modern age. The ornaments of this period — 
the ear-ring», bracelets, and pendants — are found in 
amber (brought, probably, from the shores of the 
Baltic), glass (blue, yellow, and white), and even in 
gold. • 
ISut, leaving the wealth of metal objects which 
excite our admiration and surpriseat every moment, 
and our appreciation of the ingenuity and skill of 
the workman of this pre-historic race, let us pass to 
the ceramics and see what progress the potter of 
the Bronze period has made over his brothers of the 
preceding ages. It is evident that pottery has now 
approached a fine art. The shapes of the vases are 
so graceful and perfect that some of- them can rival 
those of the Roman ceramics. Utensils, dishes, 
cups, and plates are all more or less flat at the 
bottom, while vases and goblets are sometimes 
rounded or conical, necessitating some kind of 
stand to place them in. /C few specimens are sup- 
ported by feet; others have one foot, enlarged at the 
base and hollow inside, always decorated with taste, 
very fragile and easily broken. Triple vases are 
among the curious diversities of shape, being com- 
posed of three vases identically alike, joined by clav 
cylinders, perforated so that there is a communica- 
tion between them. In certain tombs in Prussia 
(Lausitz) and in the ruins of Troy, analogous vases 
are found. Do we not find the same idea, t»o, in 
the baskets of the Japanese.' Vases vary in size at 
this period, from the colossal, to the tiny things 
(evidently playthings for children) no larger than 
a nut. 
The ornamentation of the pottery, as that of the 
bronze implements, is geometric — series of lines 
traced in different ways, or grouped with artistic 
skill. Triangles, concentric circles, wreaths jutting 
out or hollowed in the clay, are among the most 
beautiful of the designs. Here and there the cross 
is met with, especially on the bottom of certain 
little vases. The custom of coloring vases in 
yellow, red, or black, belongs only to the end of the 
Bronze Age, therefore specimens are very rare. 
The best of these was found at Moerigen. It has 
the form of a large open dish, whose interior is 
covered with geometric designs, artistically colored 
in red and black. The potters employed pebbles of 
serpentine to rub the surface of the vases, but some 
pieces present such a polished exterior as could 
only be obtained by means of varnish. Moulds 
were used instead of the potter's wheel to shape the 
vases, and, in some cases, thin bands of metal, kept 
in place by resin, were bound around the outer 
edges for ornament. 
Though no idea of using the kingdom of Nature 
as a model for ornamentation seems to have 
occurred to the Lacustres, they seem to have tried 
their hand at modelling. Little statuettes of pigs, 
moles, and ducks have appeared, the latter being 
very interesting, since instead of feathers, the 
artist has glued little pieces of tin to the clay. As 
all the palafittes were destroyed by fire, it is not 
unusual to see several objects — bracelets, hatchets, 
and lances — in a state of conglomeration, soldered 
together by the heat to which they have been 
exposed. 
In order to arrive at such a high degree of culti- 
vation, which includes a technical knowledge very 
astonishing at this epoch when individual develop- 
ment was confronted with such great obstacles, it 
must be granted that the pre-historic race was well 
endowed, both as to intelligence and ingenuity. 
N'or were they lacking in surgical skill, one would 
premise, for a skull was found in Dr. Gross's 
presence, at nearly two metres depth of soil, which 
had a round opening in the occipital region of three 
centimetres diameter, which by analogy is identical 
with the operation of.modern days termed " trepana- 
tion." The practice of "trepanning" has already- 
been proved in several places, though this is the 
first and only instance as yet discovered among the 
Lacustres. t)r. Prunieres, of Lyons, was the first 
to draw the attention of archicologists to t+iis point, 
in determining the numerous skulls bearing traces 
of this surgical operation discovered in the dolmens 
of the Lozere.* Dr. II. Waukel de Blansko (Mora- 
via) also has found a skull, presenting the resection 
of the greatest part of the orcipital bone, in a tomb 
near d'Olmutz. 
But the "beautiful Bronze Age" had its limit. 
It must have been a past age long before the men of 
iron weapons occupied the banks of the lake. His- 
tory had not begun for us by the advent of the 
Rom,-As when the last palafitte of the Bronze Age 
was destroyed ; therefore we cannot know why the 
beautiful cities were thus desolated. It is almost 
too much to hope that further researches can throw 
light upon this disastrous close to an age of 
remarkable development. 
*Druiiiical reiniiins. 
[OrigiiKil in t'opuUir Science Xcws,\ 
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND CHRONOLOGY 
—CHARACTERS OF EGYPTIAN INSCRIP- 
TIONS—THE ROSETTA STONE. 
, BY JOSEPH WALLACE. 
The history of the development and decay of the 
Egyptian language has not yet been authentically 
traced; only the four distinct graphic systems — 
Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Demotic, and Coptic — can 
safely be confined within chronological limits. The 
time of the development of the old and full hiero- 
glyphic writing is unknown. It was perfectly 
understood and freely .used in the third and fourth 
dynasties, which would render it probable that the 
date of its discovery must be placed earlier than 
3,000 years B. C. There were thirty-one dynasties 
which reigned successively in Egypt, numbering 
upwards of three hundred kings. The total number 
of years between the reigns of Menes and Nectanebo 
II., (about 350 B. C), the last king of the thirtieth 
dynasty, who was succeeded by a Persian, was 
3,555 years. This succession, though the longest 
hitherto established anywhere in the world, is now, 
also, the best authenticated. It is based upon the 
lists of kings and their reigning years, and these 
lists are corroberated and elucidated by contempo- 
rary monuments up to the fourth dVnasty, with only 
slight breaks in the chain. The era of Menes, 
according to Bunsen, was 3,643 B. C. Lepsius 
makes it 3,803; Brugsch, 4,455; and, according to 
Mariette, 5,004. It is still disputed among Egypti- 
ologists whether the first seventeen dynasties which 
succeeded Menes were consecutive. It is main- 
tained, however, by the latest writers, that the 
dynasties were, with some exceptions, consecutive, 
and that the kings enumerated reigned over all 
Egypt. 
The use of hieroglyphic writing was not confined 
to the sacerdotal class, as was formerly believed on 
the authority of the Greeks, but employed by all. 
Though shorter methods of writing were afterwards 
devised, the hieroglyphic or pictorial representations 
of the language continued in use for important state 
documents, inscriptions, and religious compositions. 
It was accompanied by transcriptions in demotic 
and Greek down to the Roman emperor Decius, 
and, if Lenormant's researches are correct, so late 
as the usurpation of the government of Egypt by 
Achilles, who was put to death by Diocletian, A. D. 
296. The spread of Christianity in Egypt caused 
a proscription of hieroglyphics, because they are 
full of mythological allusions and sensual figures. 
The wants of a reading and writing nation led at an 
early period to the use of linear hieroglyphics in 
long documents, which subsequently developed into 
a cursive hand, called the hieratic. 
"The great body of the Egyptian jiterature," says 
the learned oriental scholar. Rev. John Thein, " has 
reached us through this character, the reading of 
which can only be determined by resolving it first 
into its prototype hieroglyphics. It is not possible 
to fix the time of the first use of hieratic writing, 
but from the actual preservation of several hieratic 
papyri of the eleventh dynasty, presenting it as a 
perfectly distinct and well developed mode of writ- 
ing, it is safe to conclude that it must have come in 
use earlier than 2,000 B. C." 
The demotic denotes a rise of the vulgar tongue 
into literary use, which took place about the begin- 
ning of the. seventh' century B. C., when it was 
brought into fashion by the great social revolution 
in the reign of Psammetik. The oldest papyrus 
found, which is now in tlie Turin museum, dates 
from the forty-fifth year of his reign, or 620 B. C. 
The demotic was used to transcribe the hieroglyphic 
and hieratic papyri and Inscriptions into the vulgar 
idiom till the secolfTd century A. Dvy^nd the gradual 
transition from the obscure and diflicult demotic to 
the more intelligible coptic alphabet. Demotic 
words were occasionally transcribed in Greek letters, 
pure Coptic occasionally in the demotic characters, 
and, again, derr^ptic in Greek letters, with the 
sounds not found in Greek, preserving their 
original signs, which were in reality the Coptic 
alphabet. Coptic is the exclusive character of the 
Christian ICgyptian literature, and marks the last 
development or final decay of the Egyptian lan- 
guage, which became almost extinct in the last 
century, and made way for the Arabic. 
The learned men of the last century who gave 
their attention to Egyptian writings, naturally con- 
sulted the ancient Greek and Roman writers, and 
censequently were led astray. All the ancients 
agreed in speaking of the hieroglyphic system as 
ideographic. They even gave the n»eaning of a 
few signs which are common in the inscriptions, 
and seemed to be well informed as to their interpre- 
tation. As the hieratic and demotic characters 
appeared more cursive and better suited to the 
transcription of long documents, they maintained 
that by means of them the same language was 
written in letters representing sounds. The writ- 
ings of Kircher during the seventeenth century, 
De Guigness and Koch in the eighteenth, and, 
later, those of Zoega, were based on the opinions of 
the Greeks and Romans, and consequently failed to 
throw light on the language. 
An incident took place in 1799 which had the 
effect of chang4ng the whole texture of the ancfent 
speculations on the Egyptian hieroglyphic writ- 
ings. A French engineer officer, M. Broussard, 
while throwing up earthworks at Rosetta (Bashid), 
discovered a large black slab of stone, somewhat 
mutilated, with an inscription in hieroglyphic, 
demotic, and in Greek. The victory of the English 
a few days later threw it into the hands of the 
ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, who deposited 
it in the British Museum. By this accide;it, a text 
was discovered, which the Greek version stated was 
an inscription of divine honors to one of the 
Ptolemies, and that the hieroglyphic and demotic 
versions were transcriptions of the Greek text. 
Although this was a very important aid to the 
Egyptologists, and a hopeful suggestion to a suc- 
cessful solution of those mysterious characters which 
defied the learned of all nations for many centuries, 
