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    accident , upon the meaning of a puzzle which seemed to baffle all chance of elucidation * Dr . Young and M . Champollion , aided by the inquiries of Mr . Salt and Mr . Banfees , have made great progress in deciphering the ancient Egyptian inscriptions ; and , by a most fortunate coincidence , the last gentleman , in making excavations at Abydos , disinterred a genealogical table of the Egyptian kings , which not only fixes many of the hieroglyphic

    discoveries , but confirms and establishes the much-questioned canon of Manetho . It is well known that while Egypt was occupied by the French troops , a block or pillar of black basalt was discovered at Rosetta , which afterwards fell into the hands of the English , and now rests in the British Museum . On this pillar were three inscriptions of the age of Ptolemy Epiphanes , one in Greek , a second ( as was stated in the Greek ) in the sacred or hieroglyphic

    characters , and the third in the enchorial ( demotic or popular ) letters of the country . Here , therefore , being a Greek inscription , with two translations , a key was given to the task of understanding and deciphering these two translations , and thus obtaining a clue and alphabet to the languages in which they were written . It is not necessary to detail the ineffectual labours of many great scholars in this task , but at last , Dr . Young first , and afterwards M . Champollion , discovered the true explanation .

    Considenng that the inscriptions on monuments , even of the age of the Caesars , are in the same style as those on the most ancient , and , therefore , that the system of writing must have been well known , at any rate to some persons , to a comparatively late period , it seems extraordinary that a minute account of it had not been handed down by any classical writer . Herodotus and Diodorus were either ignorant on the subject or conveyed their hints so obscurely as to be of no service ; but Clemens Alexandrinus , it now appears ,

    has ( in a passage , about the meaning of which none were agreed , though these discoveries have made it tolerably obvious ) given an outline of the whole system , though with such a want of explanation as to details as rendered his description of no service to the uninitiated . After a great deal of fruitless labour , and measuring comparative distances and spaces on the three versions , the places where the proper names mentioned in tfhe Greek text must occur in the translations were in many cases fixed ; and groups of figures or characters being there found answering

    to those in the places where the same words must , as it was known , occur again , certain points or landmarks were ascertained which reduced the investigation within manageable limits . So far as the enchorial , or , as it was supposed , alphabetic version was concerned , the proper names were thus ascertained , and an alphabet of an arbitrary character was compiled , giving to the characters the powers which were required to effect the construction of the words , the situation of which was thus indicated .

    On minute examination of the hieroglyphic version , to which the enchorial , from the similarity of many of the characters , formed a clue , the positions of the names were ascertained in that version also ; and it was further found that tjiey were each inclosed in a ring or circular border . The hieroglyphic figures gp inclosed had some of them a resemblance to the enchorial characters at the corresponding places in the enchorial version ,

    wmch led to the conclusion th . at the latter wag only a cut-down or running hand , formed from the more finished pictures of the hieroglyphic style ; and if so , alphabetic writing might be suspected at any rate to be mixed with the supposed hieroglyphic or pictorial representation . Still , as far as experience and opinion had hitherto gone , hieroglyphic writing was supposed to be throughout of one character , —ideographic or symbolic , i . e . representing

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    474 Egyptian Hieroglyphics .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 474, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/2/