HENRY BRUGSCH. 669 



years. It contains all sorts of inexactitudes, and there is not one page 

 which could remain intact if one thought of publishing- a new edition; 

 but, in such a case, we must never judge the value of a work by the 

 errors which are subsequently discovered, because it has served to 

 render generations of scholars better armed than was the author. We 

 must always inquire what the state of science was at the time a work 

 appears, and thus measure the excellence and importance of the serv- 

 ices rendered. Demotic had not been read before Brugsch fixed the 

 processes of reading and the syntax; as soon as his grammar appeared 

 it was merely necessary to employ his rales for the decipherment and 

 interpretation of the texts. He understood this fact so well that after 

 1855 he no longer gave to studies of this sort the time hitherto devoted 

 to them. He translated the tablets of Stobart, which gave him 

 the opportunity to correct the received ideas on the division of the 

 Egyptian year, 1 the bilingual papyri, which Rhind had brought from 

 Thebes, 2 and occasionally new inscriptions, but he left it to others to 

 complete what he had so brilliantly begun. The study of demotic is 

 accompanied by an inconvenience to which the strongest will has more 

 than once yielded. The texts are so small and contain forms so curious 

 'that the most careful facsimiles can never render the character. Photog- 

 raphy is not always sufficient to reproduce them, and it is necessary to 

 have the originals at hand to understand some passages with cer- 

 tainty. Only a museum curator, who has the papyri at his disposal, 

 can continue with success the study of demotic. Other Egyptologists 

 have always been obliged, by the force of circumstances, to give it up 

 after a certain time, no matter how interested they were or how 

 brilliantly they had begun. 



But Brugsch had better work to do than to absorb himself in the 

 interpretation of these unthankful and most fastidious texts. Two 

 subjects had especially occupied him during his stay on the banks of 

 the Nile, the history and the ancient geography of the country. The 

 history still rested on the account written by Champollion-Figeac, after 

 the posthumous note of his brother, for the series of the TJnivers Pit- 

 toresque; while for the geography there were only the accounts of the 

 classical and Coptic epoch, brought together in l'Egypte sous les 

 Pharaons by Cliampollion-le-Jeune, and in the Memoires historiques 

 et geographique of Etienne-Quatremere. Harris had just found out 

 the value of the lists engraved on the monuments and had published a 

 few. 3 Brugsch brought back new ones and by comparing them with 

 the old lists deduced the entire series of names under the native Pha- 



'Nouvelles recberches sur la division de l'annee des anciens Egyptiens, suivies 

 d'un memoire sur les observations planetaires consignees dans quatre tablettes 

 Egyptiennes en e"criture domotique. Berlin. 8°. 1855. 



2 A. Henry Rbind's zwei bilingue Papyri, hieratisch und deniotiscb, iibersetzt 

 und herausgegeben. Leipsig. 4°. 1865. 



:, Rieroglyphical Standards representing places in Egypt supposed to be its Nomes 

 and Toparchies, collected by A. C. Harris, M. R. S. L. London. 4°. 1851. 



