290 THOMAS YOUNG. 



"I had thought it necessary/' says Young, in an 

 essay written to clear the air on this and various other 

 points some years afterwards, " to make myself in some 

 measure familiar with the remains of the old Egyptian 

 language as they are preserved in the Coptic and The- 

 baic versions of the Scriptures; and I had hoped, with 

 the assistance of this knowledge, to be able to find an 

 alphabet which would enable me to read the Enchorial 

 inscription, at least into a kindred dialect. But in the 

 progress of the investigation I had gradually been com- 

 pelled to abandon this expectation, and to admit the 

 conviction that no such alphabet would ever be dis- 

 covered, because it had never been in existence. I was 

 led to this conclusion, not only by the untractable nature 

 of the inscription itself which might have depended on 

 my own want of information and address but still more 

 decidedly by the manifest occurrence of a multitude of 

 characters which were obviously imperfect imitations 

 of the more intelligible pictures that were observable 

 among the distinct hieroglyphics of the first inscrip- 

 tion, such as a priest, a statue, a mattock, or plough, 

 which were evidently, in their primitive state, delinea- 

 tions of the objects intended to be denoted by them, 

 and which were, as evidently, introduced among the 

 Enchorial characters." 



eral plates in which the hieroglyphic and hieratic characters are 

 compared, on the same plan as Dr. Young's specimens in the 

 Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in 1819. He sent a copy of 

 them to Dr. Young, but withheld the letterpress. Dr. Young 

 accordingly remained for several years under the impression that 

 this work had been published at a much earlier period. Writing 

 to Sir William Gell in 1827 in reference to this point, Young re- 

 marks: "I never knew till now how much later his publication 

 was, for he gave it to me without the text." The publication 

 was Champollion's Comparative Table of Hieroglyphics, "con- 

 taining," says Young, "what I had published in 1816," five years 

 earlier. 



