38 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



the army on whom "forty centuries looked down" had retreated, 

 the Rosetta stone was sent in 1802 by Hamilton to England, where 

 it remains in the British Museum. On the face of the stone is in- 

 scribed in Greek, in Demotic, and in Hieroglyphic characters, the 

 decree of the priests of Memphis after their coronation of Ptolemy 

 the Illustrious, with the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt at 

 Memphis, in the temple of Ptah, 200 years B. C. Porson and 

 Heyne made out the Greek text of the inscription, and in 1802 

 DeSacy, the French Orientalist, and Ackerblade, a Swede, who un- 

 derstood Coptic, analyzed some of the names in the Demotic text. 

 Young, the physicist, best known by his theories concerning light, 

 published in the Transactions of the Antiquarian Society, in 18 15, a 

 supposed translation of the Hieroglyphic text. He and Champol- 

 lion worked simultaneously, though by different methods, but the 

 brilliant Frenchman carried his system beyond the point at which 

 Young rested. Young, however, independently discovered that the 

 cartouches or lines surrounding some of the signs, contained the 

 proper names of Kings. The truth of that had been suspected by 

 Zoega, a Dane. Young's greater discovery was that the figures with- 

 in those lines represented, not ideas, but sounds. That was the 

 hinge on which the secret turned. Champollion hoped this might 

 some day be found true, yet was not sure but such hope might turn 

 out to be an illusion. In 18 14, only a year before, he wrote : — " My 

 " studies day by day strengthen the flattering, though perhaps illu- 

 "sive hope, that from those tablets on which Egypt represented 

 " only material objects, will yet be recovered the sounds of the lan- 

 "guage and the expression of Egyptian thought." Champolli6n was 

 on the threshold of discovery, but Young was the first to cross into 

 the vestibule of the temple. The credit given to him by Sharpe, the 

 Egyptologist, can hardly be gainsayed : — " It is to this stone, with its 

 " three kinds of letters, and to the skill and industry of Dr. Young, 

 " that we now owe our knowledge of hieroglyphics. The Greeks 

 "and Romans, who might have learned how to read this kind of 

 " writing if they had wished, seem never to have taken the trouble 

 " and it was left for an Englishman to unravel the hidden meaning 

 " after it had been forgotten for thirteen centuries." It was not till 

 December, 17th, 1822, that Champollion read to the Academy his 

 celebrated paper, published under the title of "A letter to M. 

 Dacier." He was an excellent Coptic scholar, and in his later years 



