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THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY AND REVIEW . NEW SERIES , No . V .
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MAY , 1827 .
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No event in the history of literature has ever promised more curious and interesting results than the remarkable discoveries made in Egyptian antiquities by Dr . Young and M . Champollion . The light of historical truth and certainty has bee ^ n thrown on ages , which had hitherto been abandoned to ancient fable and modern hypothesis : the long-lost key to the stores of
Egyptian wisdom has been found , and though there is no probability that any hidden treasures of moral , political or scientific truth will be found in them , it is a discovery of some importance , even in this view , to know what they do not contain , while we may reasonably hope that our knowledge of the history both of this country and others connected with it will receive very important accessions .
The nature of Dr . Young's an < J M . Champollion ' s discoveries is now become familiar to the public by means of various articles of periodical literature , and especially the last number of the Edinburgh Review , in which they are very fully and clearly detailed . * It is not the purpose of the
* The Reviewer is not equally successful in his interpretation of the celebrated passage of the Stromata of Clemens Alexandrinus , Vol . II . p . 657 , Potter , in which that father explains the different kinds of Egyptian writing . He translates bid rSv Trpdrcov < rTQt % etu > v " by the initial letters , " which he thinks corresponds exactly with M . Champollion ' s discovery . But " alphabetical letters" would have been <\ more correct translation ^ It is true that 0-roi % e 7 a by itself means alphabetical letters , but such pleonasms as primary elements , ( Hor . Serm . I . I . 26 , ) where elements alone would have expressed the meaning , are too common in all languages to allow of any stress being laid on itp Q ra . ' * Probe scio literaa interdum alphabeticas ( apud Platonem scilicet Aristotelemque ) vpSra oroi %£ 4 a nuncuperi . " Bailey , Hierog . Or .
et Us . p . 33 . It is , besides , by no means certain , that the phonetic system is derived from the initial letters . That M . Champollion ' s alphabet represents correctly ths sounds of the letters , there can be no reasonable doubt ; that the figures represent objects whose Coptic names began with these letters , is a probable conjecture , and strongly supported by analogy ; but hitherto only a small proportion of his phonetic characters have been found capable of such an explanation . Precis , p . 312 . Again , the words . ^ 6 ' &i wep Tporr * Kfl $ 7 p < x « T < xr
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VOL . I , Y
Biblical Gleanings From Recent Works On Egyptian Antiquities.
BIBLICAL GLEANINGS FROM RECENT WORKS ON EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES .
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page unpag, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/1/
