290 THOMAS YOUNG. 



'I had thought it necessary,' says Young, Id 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 un tract able 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.' 



Young, as we have seen, had begun his labours on 



pared, on the same plan as Dr. Young's specimens in the Encycl^- 

 padia 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 poin*-, Young remarks : • 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 Com- 

 parative Table of Hieroglyphics, ' containing,' says Young, ' what 2 

 had published in 1816,' five years earlier. 



