THE NEW SCIENCE OF ORIENTAL ARCH/EOLOGY 



HOW THE "RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX" WAS READ 



CONSPICUOUSLY placed in the great hall of 

 v_> Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum is a 

 wonderful piece of sculpture known as the Rosetta 

 Stone. I doubt if any other piece in the entire exhibit 

 attracts so much attention from the casual visitor as 

 this slab of black basalt on its telescope-like pedestal. 

 The hall itself, despite its profusion of strangely sculpt- 

 ured treasures, is never crowded, but before this stone 

 you may almost always find some one standing, gazing 

 with more or less of discernment at the strange char- 

 acters that are graven neatly across its upturned, 

 glass-protected face. A glance at this graven surface 

 suffices to show that three sets of inscriptions are 

 recorded there. The upper one, occupying about one- 

 fourth of the surface, is a pictured scroll, made up of 

 chains of those strange outlines of serpents, hawks, 

 lions, and so on, which are recognized, even by the 

 least initiated, as hieroglyphics. The middle inscrip- 

 tion, made up of lines, angles, and half-pictures, one 

 might surmise to be a sort of abbreviated or short-hand 

 hieroglyphic. The third or lower inscription is Givck 

 )bviously a thing of words. If the screeds above 



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