74 TARDINESS AND COMPARATIVE INDECISION OF THE 



subdivision, we may next proceed to write the Greek text over 

 the enchorial in such a manner that the passages ascertained 

 may all coincide as nearly as possible ; and it is obvious 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 ar- 

 ranged, we ultimately discover the signification of the greater 



part of the individual enchorial words ; The degree of 



evidence in favour of the supposed signification of each as- 

 semblage of characters may be most conveniently appreciated, 

 by arranging them in a lexicographical form, according to 

 the words of the translation ; the enchorial words themselves 

 not readily admitting a similar arrangement: 



" It might naturally have been expected that the final cha- 

 racters of the enchorial inscription, of which the sense is thus 

 determined with tolerable certainty, although the correspond- 

 ing part of the Greek is wanting, would have immediately 

 led us to a knowledge of the concluding phrase of the distinct 

 hieroglyphical characters, which remains unimpaired. But 

 the agreement between the two conclusions is by no means 

 precise ; and the difficulty can only be removed by supposing 

 the king to be expressly named in the one, while he is only 

 designated by his titles in the other. With this slight varia- 

 tion, and with the knowledge of the singular accident, that 

 the name of Ptolemy occurs three times in a passage of 

 the enchorial inscription, where the Greek has it but twice, 

 we proceed to identify this name among the sacred characters, 

 in a form sufficiently conspicuous, to have been recognized 

 upon the most superficial examination of the inscriptions, if 

 this total disagreement of the frequency of occurrence had not 

 imposed the condition of a long and laborious investigation, 

 as an indispensable requisite for the solution of so much of the 

 enigma : this step, however, being made good, we obtain from 

 it a tolerably correct scale for the comparative extent of the 

 sacred characters, of which it now appears that almost half of 

 the lines are entirely wanting, those which remain being also 

 much mutilated. Such a scale may also be obtained, in a 

 different manner, by marking, on a straight ruler, the places 

 in which the most characteristic words, such as god, king, 

 priest, and shrine occur, in the latter parts of the other in- 

 scriptions, at distances proportional to the actual distances 

 from the end; and then trying to find corresponding cha- 

 racters among the hieroglyphics of the first inscription, by 

 varying the obliquity of the ruler, so as to correspond to all 

 possible lengths which that inscription can be supposed to 



