HOW THE HIEROGLYPHIC LANGUAGE WAS RECOVERED.
On the triumph of Christianity, the idolatrous religion of the ancient
Egyptians was regarded with pious abhorrence, and so in course of time the
hieroglyphics became neglected and forgotten. Thus for fifteen centuries
the hieroglyphic inscriptions that cover tombs, temples, and obelisks were
regarded as unmeaning characters. Thousands of travellers traversed the
land of Egypt, and yet they never took the trouble to copy with accuracy a
single line of an inscription. The monuments of Egypt received a little
attention about the middle of the eighteenth century, and vague notions of
the nature of hieroglyphs were entertained by Winckelman, Visconti, and
others. Most of their suggestions are of little value; and it was not
until the publication of the description of ancient Egypt by the first
scientific expedition under Napoleon that the world regained a glimpse of
the true nature of the long-forgotten hieroglyphs.
In 1798 M. Boussard discovered near Rosetta, situated at one of the mouths
of the Nile, a large polished stone of black granite, known as "The
Rosetta Stone." This celebrated monument it appears was set up in the
temple of Tum at Heliopolis about 200 B.C., in honour of Ptolemy V.,
according to a solemn decree of the united priesthood in synod at Memphis.
On its discovery, the stone was presented to the French Institute at
Cairo; but on the capture of Alexandria by the British in 1801, and the
consequent defeat of the French troops, the Rosetta Stone came into the
possession of the English general, and was presented by him to King George
III. The king in turn presented the precious relic to the nation, and the
stone is now in safe custody in the British Museum.
[Illustration: THE ROSETTA STONE.]
The Rosetta Stone has opened the sealed book of hieroglyphics, and enabled
the learned to understand the long-forgotten monumental inscriptions. On
the stone is a trigrammatical inscription, that is, an inscription thrice
repeated in three different characters; the first in pure hieroglyphs,
the second in Demotic, and the third in Greek. The French savants made the
first attempt at deciphering it; but they were quickly followed by German,
Italian, Swedish, and English scholars. Groups of characters on the stone
were observed amid the hieroglyphs to correspond to the words, Alexander,
Alexandria, Ptolemy, king, etc., in the Greek inscription. Many of the
opinions expressed were very conflicting, and most of them were ingenious
conjectures. A real advance was made in the study when, in 1818, Dr.
Young, a London physician, announced that many of the characters in the
group that stood for Ptolemy must have a phonetic value, somewhat after
the manner of our own alphabet. M. Champollion, a young French savant,
deeply interested in Egyptology, availed himself of Dr. Young's discovery,
and pursued the study with ardent perseverance.
In 1822 another inscribed monument was found at Philæ, in Upper Egypt,
which rendered substantial help to such Egyptologists as were eagerly
striving to unravel the mystery of the hieroglyphs. It was a small obelisk
with a Greek inscription at the base, which inscription turned out to be a
translation of the hieroglyphs on the obelisk. Champollion found on the
obelisk a group of hieroglyphs which stood for the Greek name Kleopatra;
and by carefully comparing this group with a group on the Rosetta Stone
that stood for Ptolemy, he was able to announce that Dr. Young's teaching
was correct, inasmuch as many of the hieroglyphs in the royal names are
alphabetic phonetics, that is, each represents a letter sound, as in the
case of our own alphabet.
Champollion further announced that the phonetic hieroglyph stood for the
initial letter of the name of the object represented. Thus, in the name
Kleopatra, the first hieroglyph is a knee, called in Coptic _kne_, and
this sign stands for the letter _k_, the first letter in Kleopatra. The
second hieroglyph is a lion couchant, and stands for _l_, because that
letter is the first in _labu_, the Egyptian name of lion. Further, by
comparing the names of Ptolemy and Kleopatra with that of Alexander,
Champollion discovered the value of fifteen phonetic hieroglyphs. In the
pursuit of his studies he also found out the existence of homophones, that
is, characters having the same sound; and that phonetics were mixed up in
every inscription with ideographs and representations.
In 1828, the French Government sent Champollion as conductor of a
scientific expedition to Egypt. He translated the inscriptions with
marvellous facility, and seemed at once to give life to the hitherto mute
hieroglyphs. On a wall of a temple at Karnak, amidst the prisoners of King
Shishak, he found the name "Kingdom of Judah." It will be remembered that
the Bible states that "In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak, King
of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem: and he took away the treasures of the
house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house" (1 Kings xiv,
25, 26). The discovery, therefore, of the name "Kingdom of Judah" in
hieroglyphs in connection with Shishak excited much interest in the
Christian world, corroborating as it did the Biblical narrative.
In 1830 Champollion returned from Egypt laden with the fruits of his
researches; and by his indefatigable genius he worked out the grand
problem of the deciphering and interpretation of hieroglyphic
inscriptions.
Since that time the study of Egyptology has been pursued by Rosellini,
Bunsen, De Rouge, Mariette, Lenormant, Brugsch, Lepsius, Birch, Poole,
etc. The number of hieroglyphs at present are about a thousand. A century
ago there existed no hope of recovering the extinct language of the
ancient Egyptians; but by the continued labours of genius, the darkness of
fifteen centuries has been dispelled, and the endless inscriptions
covering obelisks, temples and tombs, proclaim in a wondrous manner the
story of Egypt's ancient greatness.
Dr. Brugsch has written a long and elaborate history of Egypt, derived
entirely from "ancient and authentic sources;" that is, from the
inscriptions on the walls of temples, on obelisks, etc., and from papyri.
The work has been translated into English, and published with the title,
"Egypt under the Pharaohs." The student also has only to turn to the
article "Hieroglyphics" in Vol. XI. of the ninth edition of the
"Encyclopædia Britannica," to see what progress has been made recently in
this direction.
But notwithstanding all this, the language of the hieroglyphs is not yet
by any means perfectly understood and Egyptian grammar still presents
many knotty problems that await solution. Rapid strides are daily being
made in the study of Egyptology; and it may be hoped that the time is not
far distant when the student will read hieroglyphic inscriptions with the
same facility that the classic student reads a page of Greek and Latin.
[Illustration]