320 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 felloAV-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 Avliich 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 re- 

 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 Egyi)tians, 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, 



