820 THOMAS YOUNG. 
sounds, or true letters. This important result found no 
opponents after a Swedish man of science, M. Akerblad, 
in completing the labours of our fellow-countryman, had 
assigned, with a probability bordering on certainty, the 
phonetic value of each of the different characters em- 
ployed in the transcription of the proper names which 
the Greek text disclosed. ? 
There remained, all along, the purely hieroglyphic 
part of the inscription, or what was supposed such; 
this remained untouched; no one had ventured to at- 
tempt to decypher it. 
It is here that we find Young declaring, as if by a 
species of inspiration, that in the multitude of sculptured 
signs on the stone representing either entire animals, or 
fantastic forms, or again instruments, products of art, or 
geometrical forms, those of these signs which were found 
inclosed in elliptic borders, corresponded to the proper 
names in the Greek inscription; in particular to the 
name of Ptolemy, the only one which in the hieroglyphic 
inscription remains uninjured. Immediately afterwards 
Young said that in the special case of the border or 
scroll, the signs included represented no longer ideas, 
but sounds. In a word, he sought by a minute and ré- 
fined analysis to assign an individual hieroglyphic to 
each of the sounds which the ear receives in the name of 
Ptolemy in the Rosetta stone, and in that of Berenice, in 
another monument. 
Thus we see, unless I mistake, in the researches of 
Young on the graphic systems of the Egyptians, the 
three culminating points. No one, it is said, had per- 
ceived them, or at least had pointed them out, before the 
English philosopher. This opinion, although generally 
admitted, appears to me open to dispute. It is, in fact, 
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