and animals in various postures, plants, household utensils, implements of war, of husbandry, &c., and other forms not so readily recognised. The only clue to their interpretation was a book written by one Horus Apollo, or Horapollo, and translated from Egyptian into Greek, which professed to give the meaning of a few of these characters; and that of a few more was handed down by a sort of vague tradition. The information thus conveyed was found, however, wholly insufficient for any practical results.

In this state the subject remained until the beginning of the present century. One or two works of great learning had cleared the way for a full discovery, by collecting together a vast amount of information more or less bearing on the point, but scattered through the works of the classic writers; by proving that the art of hieroglyphical writing had not ceased on the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses the Persian, as had been commonly believed, but had continued till the general profession of Christianity; and by showing, what was of immense importance, that the language of ancient Egypt had not been lost with the system of writing, but was identical with a language still spoken in that country, called Coptic. In this language, written in the Greek character, many books still remain, including a version of the entire Bible.

The hieroglyphics, however, seemed hopelessly illegible. At length an incident occurred which proved a key to the lost character, by which the treasures of Egyptian antiquity have been unlocked, and are now being unfolded to the public mind. The French expedition to Egypt, in 1798, had been accompanied by learned men, whose attention was directed, amongst other scientific subjects, to the monuments. In digging the foundations of a fort near Rosetta, at one of the mouths of the Nile, they had discovered a stone, containing a triple inscription, one part being written in hieroglyphics, another in the enchorial writing, or what we may call the running-hand of ancient Egypt, and a third in Greek, purporting to be a translation of the two former. On the taking of Alexandria by the British, all the objects collected by the French fell into the hands of the conquerors, and among them the Rosetta Stone, which was forwarded to England at the beginning of the year 1802. It is now in the Egyptian Saloon of the British Museum.

The Rosetta Stone is a block of black basalt, polished on one side, about three feet long, two feet five inches wide, and a foot thick. The inscription, which, at the beginning of the hieroglyphics and the end of the Greek, is much mutilated, is a decree of the priests of Egypt, ascribing divine honours to Ptolemy Epiphanes, and applauding various acts of public liberality and wisdom performed during the earlier years of his reign. Its date is probably about 190 B. C.

The most lively interest was at once excited by the arrival of this tablet, and hopes were entertained that, by its means, the learned might discover the signification of the hieroglyphics. Many scholars of eminence, therefore, both at home and on the continent, laboured in the study with much assiduity, but, for some time, with little success. It was not until the year 1819, that the true key to the longsought interpretation was published by Dr. Young, in an article entitled "Egypt," in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. The following quotations are interesting, as they shew the manner in which ingenuity and learning can attack and overcome difficulties, which, to ordinary minds, would appear insurmountable; as an attempt to decipher an inscription, not a single letter of which was known. "The enchorial inscription," observes Dr. Young, "notwithstanding its deficiencies near the beginning, is still sufficiently perfect to allow us to compare its different parts with each other and with the Greek, by the same method that we should employ if it were entire. Thus, if we examine the

parts corresponding, in their relative situation, to two passages of the Greek inscription in which Alexander and Alexandria occur, we soon recognise two well-marked groups of characters resembling each other, which we may therefore consider as representing these names—a remark which was first made by M. de Sacy, in his letter relating to this inscription. A small group of characters occurring very often in almost every line, might be either some termination, or some very common particle; it must therefore be reserved till it is found in some decisive situation, after some other words have been identified, and it will then easily be shewn to mean and. The next remarkable collection of characters is repeated twentynine or thirty times in the enchorial inscription; and we find nothing that occurs so often in the Greek, except the word king, with its compounds, which is found about thirty-seven times. A fourth assemblage of characters is found fourteen times in the enchorial inscription, agreeing sufficiently well in frequency with the name of Ptolemy, which occurs eleven times in the Greek, and generally in passages corresponding to those of the enchorial text in their relative situation; and by a similar comparison, the name of Egypt is identified, although it occurs much more frequently in the enchorial inscription than in the Greek, which often substitutes for it country only, or omits it entirely. Having thus obtained a sufficient number of common points of subdivision, we may next proceed to write the Greek text over the enchorial, in such a manner that the passages ascertained may all coincide as nearly as possible; and

it is obvious that the intermediate parts of each inscription will then stand very near to the correspond ing passages of the other. In this process it will be necessary to observe that the lines of the enchorial inscription are written from right to left, as Herodotus tells us was the custom of the Egyptians."

It had been long suspected that certain groups of hieroglyphic symbols enclosed within oval rings, were proper names; and on examining these, Dr. Young soon discovered a group that answered to the name Ptolemy, which is represented in the following cut at a.

The symbols Dr. Young considered to represent the following letters and syllables. First, a square representing the letter P; a semicircle T; a character like a knot or a sprouting bulb, which he con

L

α

C

ROYAL OVALS.

sidered as not essential, but which probably represents the letter O, as we shall presently discover; a lion couchant, which he supposed to be LO, or OLE; a character not unlike a pair of sugar tongs, M; two