40 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



unravelled. The article is declined, and substantives and adjectives 

 form their plural by adding an additional letter. Pronouns are used 

 independently, or as suffixes to the verb. The first person of the 

 verb is distinguished by a sign representing the figure of a man 

 speaking. Heine said it was fortunate that the Romans learned 

 Latin in their cradles, for had they learned that language as he did, 

 they could never have found time to conquer the world. Taking 

 into account the number of signs with which this language is written, 

 and that they may be used in a representative, symbolic, determina- 

 tive, or phonetic sense, and that sounds of the phonetic alphabet 

 have more than one sign, may we not paraphrase Heine's words, 

 and say, had the Egyptians not learned their language in their 

 cradles, they could never have found time to build the pyramids 

 and make their valley the garden of the earth. 



The efforts of Young, Champollion and their coadjutors have 

 been followed by success. Starting as they did, and within the life- 

 time of living men, to examine a dozen signs, which they conjectured 

 might be phonetic symbols of an ancient alphabet, these earnest 

 men were pathfinders who broke the way to a knowledge of the 

 language of one of the oldest and most important of ancient nations. 

 How long Hieroglyphic writing was in use none can say. One of 

 the Oxford museums has a monument, thought to date from the 

 second dynasty. That may admit of doubt, but monuments of the 

 fourth dynasty incontestably shew that this form of writing has 

 existed, at least, for 3000 years before the Christian era. The 

 literature to which that language is the key remains in great part on 

 the walls of Egyptian Temples, Pyramids and Tombs, and on the 

 cerements and papyri buried with the dead. The large number of 

 Egyptian books stored in the museums and libraries of Alexandria, 

 when the Ptolemies made that city the most renowned seat of learn- 

 ing in the ancient world, in successive tumults, were destroyed by 

 Roman, Mohammedan, and, I fear it must be added, by Christian 

 hands. 



During the last half century men of ability and learning have 

 devoted their lives to the study of Egyptian history. They have 

 worked assiduously, and have garnered their treasures where they 

 will be safely kept and can be freely studied. Even the Nile mud 

 has had to yield up monuments and cities buried so many ages that 

 their names were forgotten. Some of the shadowy, half mythical. 



