238 
REPORT— 1847 . 
tions which have been gazed at with stupid wonder by the descendants!/ 
the people wl»o engraved them, and ascribed to the workmanship of ana 
and genies, have been at length read within a few j'ears and explainedfe 
the first time after tliirty centuries. The discovery began, as every * 
know*, with the* deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Thcrforjiw 
Dr. Yoiiog' and Champollion gained the clue, unravelling mysteries a* 
field where it has been reserved for a distinguished scholar of thepwf''^ 
day (the Chevalier Bmuscii) to erect the edifice of the most ancient hij^' 
of the world, a monument of thu intt'lHgence of m«xlern Europe more ew™ 
than the royal pomp of the Pyramids, whoso real builders now for the W 
time come forth to our view, after having been concealed in the rubboii 
curious facts in history have bceti made known by those inscriptioni, ^ 
among others, the cxteusimi of a Macedonian empire over a 
ln<lia, and the conquest of the i.^latid of Ceylon by a BuddliHtical rm))^ 
of Hiudustan three centuries before the Christian era. Not less 
are the inscriptions in cuneiform letters spread through the empi^ w 
great Cyrus, which are likely to throw an important light on 
as profane liistorj'. The clufi to the discovery of the sense of these 1 ” 
records wjis obtained by Grotefend, Lassen andBurnouf; 
by it, though much more by his own ingenuity, our countryman, 
Rawlinson, has succeeded iu rcmlhig the history of the 
graven on tlujjr own monmneute in a language which was doubtless 
at the courts of Susa and Persepolis, but wliicU has been lost . 
overthrow of the last Darius. The older Assyrian inscriptions are 
partly understood, and the names of the ancient kings of Babylon ■ 
found on the walla of their palaces. This most ancient variety of the 
invention of the nortfaen^'* 
. palaces. _ 
form system of writing was probably an invention oi me 
eastern branch of the Shomito or Syro-Arabian race ; and 
of writing, perhaps the most ancient in the world, 
divisions of the same family. The llimyaritic inscriptions 
various jmrts of Arabia are strikingly similar to the letters of 
Ethiopic. Ihey eo«-m to belong to the same alphabetic systeffl 
among the southern, perhaps the Cushite branch of the nSis 
l^ar more oolebrated was the third kind of wriUng, that of the 
the prototype of all the alphabets of ancient and raodem Europe, - 
bably representing the form of letlcrw in which the sacred Scnpturj 
ongmally written. Many historical facL« have been already 
these inscriptions, which are highly important in relation to ^ ^ 
But there is perhaps no country, with the exception of 
the history, or rather on the ethnology of which a greater hgtd 
thrown by the examination of inscriptions than Italy, where by 
much knowledge has been obtained of the languages spoken by tw 
races of iU inhabitants before the ascendency of Home. It l^^• 
old Italic nation*, the Latins, the Umbrians, the Opiei or Oscans ^ < 
mans, Uic Snraiiites and Sabines, tlie Siculians or CEnotrians— 
italic nations except the Tuscans—were not, as Freret and ^ U,.,# 
suppo^d. a mixture of Ccliie or other barbarous tribes .,1 
least J Vlasgi, but were alT derived from a distinct and pecuiiar branch 
T i I’ ^ ““ oerivcu irom a uistinct anu - 
nuo-European stock, and spoke dialects of one language,©' * 
Wto one variety. 
1 he analytical comparison of languages furnishes more 
liich ^ 
