THE pillar of Rosetta was now safely and quietly deposited in the British Museum; the Society of Antiquaries had engraved, and very generally circulated, a correct copy of its three inscriptions; and several of the best scholars of the age, in particular Porson and Heyne, had employed themselves in completing and illustrating the Greek text, which constituted the third part of the inscription: and it so happened that, although no person acquainted with both these critics could hesitate to give the general preference, for acuteness of observation, and felicity of conjecture, and soundness of judgment, to the English professor, yet in this instance the superior industry and vigilance of the German had given him decidedly the advantage, with respect to two or three passages, in which their translations happen to differ.

But Greek was already sufficiently understood, both in London and at Gottingen, to make this part of the investigation comparatively insignificant. Mr. Akerblad, a diplomatic gentleman, then at Paris, but afterwards the Swedish resident at Rome, had begun to decipher the middle division of the inscription; after De Sacy had given up the pursuit as hopeless, notwithstanding that he had made out very satisfactorily the names of Ptolemy and Alexander.

i. EXTRACT from Porphyry, an author of the age of Diocletian, as quoted in Scaliger's Eusebius, and probably thence in the Armenian translation.

Alexander, the Macedonian, died in the CXIVth Olympiad, after a reign of 12 years in the whole: and was succeeded in his kingdom by Aridaeus, whose name was changed to Philip, being brother to Alexander, by another mother; for he was the son of Philip by Philinna of Larissa: and after a reign of seven years, he was killed in Macedonia, by Polysperchon the son of Antipater.

Now Ptolemy the son of Arsinoe and of Lagus, after one year of this reign, by an appointment derived from Philip, was sent as a Satrap into Egypt; which he governed in this capacity for 17 years, and afterwards, with Royal authority, for 23; so that the number of all the years of his government, to the time of his death, became 40; but since he retired from the government two years before, in favour of his son Ptolemy Philadelphus, and considered himself as a subject of his son, who had been crowned in his place, the years of this first Ptolemy, called Soter, are reckoned not 40, but 38 only.

He was succeeded by his son, surnamed, as already mentioned, Philadelphia, who reigned two years during his fathers' life, and thirty [six] afterwards, so that his whole reign occupied, like his father's, 38 years.

THE manner in which the Hieroglyphical alphabet was employed, in the time of the Roman emperors, may be understood from the examination of the specimens inserted in this chapter; they comprehend an example of each of the names and titles, which Mr. Champollion has included in his catalogue. In order to illustrate the veneration paid to the Roman emperors in Egypt, I shall subjoin an extract from Strabo, relating to the administration of that country, in the days of the earlier Caesars, for he was a contemporary and a subject of Tiberius.

Book XVII. “The whole of Egypt was divided into Nomes, the Thebaid containing ten, the Delta ten, and the intermediate parts sixteen, making in all 36. . The nomes were generally divided into Toparchiae, or local governments: and these again into other portions. . At Alexandria, the Necropolis is a separate suburb, containing gardens, and sepulchres, and subterraneous passages, employed for preserving the dead.

After the death of Julius Caesar, and after the battle of Philippi, Antony went into Asia, and paid extravagant honours to Cleopatra, even making her his wife, and having several children by her. He carried on, in concert with her, the war that was terminated at Actium, and accompanied her, as is well known, in her flight. Augustus following them, destroyed them both, and set Egypt at rest from the revels of a drunkard.[…]

A complete confirmation of the principal results, which I had some years since deduced, from an examination of the hieroglyphical monuments of ancient Egypt, having been very unexpectedly derived from the ulterior researches of Mr. Champollion, and from the singular good fortune of Mr. George Grey, I cannot resist the natural inclination, to make a public claim to whatever credit may be my due, for the labour that I have bestowed, on an attempt to unveil the mystery, in which Egyptian literature has been involved for nearly twenty centuries.

If, indeed, I have not hitherto wholly withheld from the public the results of my inquiries, it has not been from the love of authorship only, nor from an impatience of being the sole possessor of a secret treasure; but because I was desirous of securing, at least, for my country, what is justly considered as a desirable acquisition to every country, the reputation of having enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge, and of having contributed to extend the dominion of the mind of man over time, and space, and neglect, and obscurity. Corona insacris certaminibusnon victori datur, sedpatriaab eo coronari pronuntiatur. And whatever vanity or enthusiasm there might be in this sentiment, it was at least sincere and unaffected.

THE Greeks and Romans, either from national pride, or from a want of philological talent, were extremely deficient in their knowledge of all such languages as they called barbarous, and they frequently made up for their ignorance by the positiveness of their assertions, with regard to facts which were created by their own imagination. It was very currently believed, on their authority, not only that Egypt was the parent of all arts and sciences, but that the hieroglyphical inscriptions, on its public monuments, contained a summary of the most important mysteries of nature, and of the most sublime inventions of man: but that the interpretation of these characters had been so studiously concealed by the priests, from the knowledge of the vulgar, and had indeed been so imperfectly understood by themselves, that it was wholly lost and forgotten in the days of the later Roman Emperors. The story, however, of a reward, supposed to have been offered in vain by one of the first of the Caesars, for an interpretation of the inscription on an obelise, then lately brought from Egypt to Rome, appears to rest on no authentic foundation.

Among the works of more modern authors, who had employed themselves in the study of the hieroglyphics, it is difficult to say whether those were the more discouraging, which, like the productions of Father Kircher and the Chevalier Palin, professed to contain explanations of every thing, or which, like the ponderous volume of Zoëga on the Obeliscs, confessed, after collecting all that was really on record, that the sum and substance of the whole amounted absolutely to nothing.

I AM impatient to turn, from every thing of a polemical or personal nature, to a field that has hitherto been exclusively in my own possession, in consequence of an event, which is the most important, considered as a single occurrence, that has taken place since the commencement of my Egyptian researches. It was very soon after my return from France, that George Francis Grey, Esq. of University College, Oxford, having been at Naples upon his return from Egypt, was so good as to bring me a few lines from my old friend Sir William Gell, himself a very successful traveller, and who has always pursued with ardour the last vestiges of the interesting remains of antiquity, both by his personal exertions, and by assisting and directing the enterprises of others.

Mr. Grey had the kindness, on the 22d of November last, to leave with me a box, containing several fine specimens of writing and drawing on papyrus; they were chiefly in hieroglyphics, and of a mythological nature: but the two which he had before described to me, as particularly deserving attention, and which were brought, through his judicious precautions, in excellent preservation, both contained some Greek characters, written apparently in a pretty legible hand. He had purchased them of an Arab at Thebes, in January 1820; and that which was most intelligible had appeared, at first sight, to contain some words relating to the service of the Christian church.

MY full conviction respecting the nature and origin of the enchorial character I expressed at the end of a collection of letters, inserted in the Museum Criticum, and published in 1815. It was not, however, till the next year, that I obtained the most complete evidence of the truth of my opinion: having been obligingly accommodated, by Mr. William Hamilton, with the use of his copy of the great Description de l'Egypte as far as it was then published, I proceeded to study its contents: and I discovered, at length, that several of the manuscripts on papyrus, which had been carefully published in that work, exhibited very frequently the same text in different forms, deviating more or less from the perfect resemblance of the objects intended to be delineated, till they became, in many cases, mere lines and curves, and dashes and flourishes; but still answering, character for character, to the hieroglyphical or hieratic writing of the same chapters, found in other manuscripts, and of which the identity was sufficiently indicated, besides this coincidence, by the similarity of the larger tablets, or pictural representations, at the head of each chapter or column, which are almost universally found on the margins of manuscripts of a mythological nature. And the enchorial inscription of the pillar of Rosetta resembled very accurately, in its general appearance, the most unpicturesque of these manuscripts.

IT is rather as being illustrated by the discovery of Mr. Grey's Greek papyrus, than as contributing much to its illustration, that I shall here introduce such passages of Diodorus Siculus and of Herodotus, as tend to explain the customs of the Egyptians respecting the honours shown to the dead bodies of their relations.

“The inhabitants of this country,” says Diodorus, Book I. § 51, Wess., in the language of Booth, p. 26, “little value the short time of this present life; but put a high esteem upon the name and reputation of a virtuous life after death; and they call the houses of the living, Inns, because they stay in them but a little while; but the sepulchers of the dead they call Everlasting habitations, because they abide in the graves to infinite generations. Therefore they are not very curious in the building of their houses; but in beautifying their sepulchres they leave nothing undone that [the excess of magnificence can suggest].”

§. 72. W. “What the Egyptians performed, after the deaths of every one of their kings, clearly evidences the great love they bore to them. For honour done to him that cannot possibly know it, in a grateful return of a former benefit, carries along with it a testimony of sincerity, without the least colour of dissimulation.” Booth, p. 37.

ALTHOUGH the discovery of the general import of the hieroglyphics has by no means excited any great sensation in this country, yet the activity of the various collectors resident in Egypt seems to have been in some measure stimulated by it. Important additions have been made, or are about to be made, to the Egyptian department of the British Museum; and in France, the magnificent liberality of the Government, together with the insatiable curiosity of some affluent individuals, has held out ample encouragement to the commercial antiquarian.

I thought myself extremely fortunate, in my return from the short excursion to Rome and Naples, that I made in the autumn of 1821, to have discovered at Leghorn, among a multitude of Egyptian antiquities, belonging to Mr. Drovetti, the French consul at Alexandria, which had long lain warehoused there, a stone containing an enchorial and a Greek inscription, which was known to have existed formerly at Menouf, but which had been lost and almost forgotten by European travellers in Egypt, and I believe by Mr. Drovetti himself; for I am informed that it is not mentioned in the catalogue of his Museum, which has been sent to Paris and elsewhere.