A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



be also made of words, only the elect have any way of 

 proving the fact. 



Fortunately, however, even the least scholarly ob- 

 server is left in no doubt as to the real import of the 

 thing he sees, for an obliging English label tells us that 

 these three inscriptions are renderings of the same mes- 

 sage, and that this message is a "decree of the priests 

 of Memphis conferring divine honors on Ptolemy V. 

 (Epiphenes), King of Egypt, B.C. 195." The label goes 

 on to state that the upper inscription (of which, un- 

 fortunately, only part of the last dozen lines or so 

 remains, the slab being broken) is in " the Egyptian 

 language, in hieroglyphics, or writing of the priests"; 

 the second inscription "in the same language is 

 in Demotic, or the writing of the people"; and the 

 third "the Greek language and character." Follow- 

 ing this is a brief biography of the Rosetta Stone it- 

 self, as follows: "The stone was found by the French 

 in 1798 among the ruins of Fort Saint Julien, near the 

 Rosetta mouth of the Nile. It passed into the hands 

 of the British by the treaty of Alexandria, and was 

 deposited in the British Museum in the year 1801." 

 There is a whole volume of history in that brief in- 

 scription and a bitter sting thrown in, if the reader 

 chance to be a Frenchman. Yet the facts involved 

 could scarcely be suggested more modestly. They are 

 recorded much more bluntly in a graven inscription 

 on the side of the stone, which reads: "Captured in 

 Eygpt by the British Army, 1801." No Frenchman 

 could read those words without a veritable sinking of 

 the heart. 



The value of the Rosetta Stone depended on the fact 



288 



