ORIENTAL ARCH/EOLOGY 



1822; his second and more important one in 1824. 

 By this time, through study of the cartouches of other 

 inscriptions, Champollion had made out almost the 

 complete alphabet, and the "riddle of the Sphinx" 

 was practically solved. He proved that the Egyptians 

 had developed a relatively complete alphabet (mostly 

 neglecting the vowels, as early Semitic alphabets did 

 also) centuries before the Phoenicians were heard of in 

 history. What relation this alphabet bore to the 

 Phoenician we shall have occasion to ask in another 

 connection; for the moment it suffices to know that 

 those strange pictures of the Egyptian scroll are really 

 letters. 



Even this statement, however, must be in a measure 

 modified. These pictures are letters and something 

 more. Some of them are purely alphabetical in char- 

 acter and some are symbolic in another way. Some 

 characters represent syllables. Others stand some- 

 times as mere representatives of sounds, and again, in a 

 more extended sense, as representations of things, such 

 as all hieroglyphics doubtless were in the beginning. 

 In a word, this is an alphabet, but not a perfected 

 alphabet, such as modern nations are accustomed to; 

 hence the enormous complications and difficulties it 

 presented to the early investigators. 



Champollion did not live to clear up all these mys- 

 teries. His work was taken up and extended by his 

 pupil Rossellini, and in particular by Dr. Richard 

 Lepsius in Germany, followed by M. Bernouf, and by 

 Samuel Birch of the British Museum, and more recent- 

 ly by such well-known Egyptologists as MM. Maspero 

 and Mariette and Chabas, in France, Dr. Brugsch, in 



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