318 THOMAS YOUNG. 



tians had two or three different sorts of wi-iting, and that 

 in one of these, at least, symbolic characters, or the rep- 

 resentatives of ideas, played a principal part. Horapollon 

 has even preserved to us the signification of a certain 

 number of these characters. Thus we know that the 

 /iaw^' designated the soul; the this, the heart; the dove 

 (which might seem strange), a violent man ; the Jlute, 

 an alien ; the number six, pleasure ; a. frog, an imprudent 

 man ; the ant, wisdom ; a running knot, love, &c. 



The signs thus preserved by Horapollon form only a 

 very small part of the eight or nine hundred characters 

 which have been found in the ancient inscriptions. The 

 moderns, Kircher among others, have endeavoured to 

 enlarge the number. Their efforts have not given any 

 useful result, unless it be so to show to what errors even 

 the best instructed men expose themselves when, in the 

 search after facts, they abandon themselves without re- 

 straint to imagination. In the want of data, the inter- 

 pretation of the Egyptian writings appeared for a long 

 time, to all sound minds, a problem completely incapable 

 of solution ; when in 1799, M. Boussard, an engineer 

 officer, discovered in the excavations which he was making 

 near Rosetta, a large stone covered with inscriptions in 

 three kinds of characters quite distinct. 



One of the series of characters was Greek. This, in 

 spite of some mutilations, made clearly known that the au- 

 thors of the monument had ordained that the same inscrip- 

 tion should be traced in three different sorts of characters, 

 viz : in the sacred characters or Egyptian hieroglyphics, 

 in the local or vulgar characters, and in Greek. Thus, 

 by an unexpected good fortune, the philologists found 

 themselves in possession of a Greek text, having also 

 before them its translation into the Egyptian language, 



