occurred during the time of his sojourn in Paris. He devotes a large
space in his diary to the great popular festival, celebrated on the
anniversary of the Revolution, from the twenty-seventh to the
twenty-ninth of July, 1843, and to the unveiling of the statue of
Napoleon on the Vendôme column. This took place on the second day of the
grand festival. The statue was enveloped in a green cloth, besprinkled
with stars. “The impression made by the unveiling,” he writes, (and we
gladly make room here for the account, both for its own sake and as a
specimen of the German style of young Lepsius,) “the impression,
especially amidst these surroundings, was very striking. Above this
seething mass, these convulsions of a struggling mob, this shouting and
quarrelling, this motley throng, this glittering of military display,
there suddenly appeared, not like a rock in the sea, (to which possibly
the column might have been compared,) but like a supernatural power, the
calm, majestic presence of Napoleon. What can produce a greater
impression than the power of a mind which manifests itself in a composed
bearing and a commanding expression, face to face with the unruly
passions of similar human spirits?”
In these words he presents to us the ideal of his life, and we shall see
how well he himself ever succeeded in preserving such a commanding
attitude towards unruly passions. “This expression of command,” he
continues, “is still grander than the great yet inanimate nature, which
is sometimes admired in contrast with nature, or even humanity, in a
state of excitement. A like impression, too, was unconsciously depicted
on every face, and a general shout, ‘Vive l’Empereur! Vive Napoleon!’
burst from the innumerable throng, which really seemed for a moment
entirely to forget the oppressive present. For one moment every
lineament expressed admiration, pleasure, satisfaction.” Then he
describes how Louis Philippe conducted the review, and continues,
“However, not the least enthusiasm was manifested for him, which, in my
opinion, is mainly owing to his personality. His external appearance
presents nothing that is at all imposing, nothing attractive; no
intellectual power of any sort is expressed in his figure or his face;
he impresses you as a stout citizen, returning thanks for the great
honor which is done him. And yet here in France, if anywhere, at least a
semblance of intrinsic greatness is needed for the eyes of the people,
since the mystic vail of royal greatness has so entirely fallen from the
head of the citizen king. As the king rode past one only heard a clamor,
such as springs from gratified curiosity.” From this festival, as
Lepsius describes it, can be inferred the historical events which must
of necessity occur later: the expulsion of Louis Philippe and the
acclamation of a Napoleon to the French throne.
With the appearance of the citizen king Lepsius’ exalted frame of mind
is dissipated, and he tries to fix the note which he can designate as
prevalent in the general din. With the aid of the interval between the
lowest note of his own voice and the sound which formed the key-note of
the clamor, he found it to be the treble _e_. Thus does the spirit of
research ever demand her due of him. The linguist everywhere scrutinizes
the value and significance of sounds and tones. He does not disdain to
amuse himself with them occasionally, and to determine the relation
between them and other perceptions of the senses. “_O_,” he writes at
one time in his diary, “seems to me brown, _a_, light blue, _e_,
colorless, a clear faint color, _i_, bright yellow.” At that time, while
writing his essay on Sanscrit palaeography, he thought he discerned that
in all languages the vowels had formed themselves by degrees, like
colors, from the _a_, but that originally there had been no distinction
between vowels and consonants. The words, he thought, had been divided
according to their sounds, in such a way that each consonant with the
vowel which followed it constituted an inseparable whole. Hence in
Sanscrit _a_ originally was even considered as a consonant, or rather as
_a_ combination of the Greek _Spiritus lenis_ and the _a_ which
necessarily followed it.
In Paris Lepsius is at first a linguist solely, and does not concern
himself with Egyptological studies. But by the end of October, through
Panofka, he is first invited to come to Italy in the name of Gerhard,
who had kept him in mind since their meeting in Berlin, and then he
receives a letter from the Alsatian Lobstein, who had met him in Paris,
and who has been authorized by Bunsen and also by Kellermann to make him
a serious proposition to come to Rome. There he is first to busy
himself with a collection of Umbrian, Oscan, and Etruscan inscriptions,
for which his dissertation would seem especially to qualify him, and
secondly to devote himself seriously to the study of the writing and
language of the ancient Egyptians. The first proposal is entirely
acceptable to him from the beginning, although it is only for the sake
of completeness that he will include in his _corpus inscriptionem_ the
Etruscan inscriptions, on the deciphering of which “many a man may yet
wear out his teeth.” The second proposition, on the contrary, causes him
the most serious deliberation. It is true that Gerhard, through whom he
had been most warmly commended to Bunsen, had already in Berlin urged
him to the study of hieroglyphics, and had assured him that he should
himself undertake it if he were but younger. It is also true that he
felt his own powers had now become fit to cope with the greatest
difficulties, but yet it seemed to him advisable to await the appearance
of Champollion’s grammar, in order to learn how the matter actually
stood. He could thence gather and decide whether the foundations had
been so well laid that by rational and scientific investigation he
should really be able to accomplish something substantial on a field
which, with the exception of Champollion himself, had up to that time
been almost exclusively occupied by bunglers and incompetent dilettanti.
The prudence with which the youth of three and twenty proceeded in this
important question of his life, is most remarkable. In the letters which
he addressed to his father, in order to obtain his advice, he sets
forth clearly and exhaustively all the reasons on both sides. Bunsen,
from whom these proposals emanate, is a person of great influence, and
if he, Lepsius, finds Champollion’s preparatory work satisfactory, and
it is possible to realize his patron’s plan of finally entrusting him
with the direction of the fine Egyptian collection at Berlin, there then
opens before him the prospect of an assured future, as far as the
material circumstances of life are concerned. This it is usually far
more difficult for an archaeologist and philologist to secure than for a
grammarian and teacher. He would not be content, he writes, to gain his
livelihood by book-writing. He had already written to his father from
Berlin, March thirteenth, 1833, “I do not know whether I should have any
special talent for the profession of teaching, since I have never yet
tried it, and even if I should adopt it, from inclination, and with the
expectation of finding contentment in it, yet, in truth, it is not a
great career.” If he can hope, (thus he continues to write to his
father, after Bunsen’s invitation,) to find in Egyptology a satisfactory
field for research, and if Bunsen can give him in advance the most
positive prospect of the patronage of the Prussian government, and the
hope of afterwards obtaining an appointment in the fine Egyptian
collection at Berlin, then he will decide to go to Rome, and to turn his
studies in the new direction which Bunsen desires; but otherwise not.
His father could only assent to his doubts and deliberations, and so, on
December twelfth, 1833, the son wrote to Bunsen the following letter,
which was to give both to his studies and his life a tendency so
peculiarly propitious for his character and talents.
“The kind confidence which, judging by an invitation lately sent me
through H. Lobstein, you appear to feel in my abilities, has aroused in
me no less pleasure than serious doubts as to how far I may myself
confide in my own powers. I in no wise mistake the importance of these
doubts, especially at my age and in my circumstances. How I shall solve
the problem of life depends chiefly on their right or wrong solution,
and therefore, as long as they are still unsettled, every impulse from
without is of infinite moment to the whole inner life and aspiration.
You could neither be aware of the soil on which your words, perhaps but
carelessly meant, had fallen, nor still less of the connection in which
they stand with my own inclinations and mental tendency. It is not as if
I had previously entertained the idea of attempting the deciphering of
hieroglyphics; rather, till now, I have been chiefly attracted towards
archaeology and general comparative philology, upon the broader field of
that science to which, in any case I had resolved to devote myself.
Although these did not give me much prospect of an assured livelihood
for the future, yet I wished to prosecute the two studies together in
Paris, because they have so many points in common, and indeed seem to me
in their essential substance to form a more perfect whole. Then latterly
I was led by chance to a subject which attracted me more the farther I
pursued it, and at last prompted me to collect the results in a short
treatise which I am about to have published in Berlin. This treatise is
immediately concerned with palaeographic researches into Sanscrit
writing, but I was soon led from the peculiarities of this writing,
which in many respects is wonderfully consonant with nature, to more
universal palaeographic laws. I found myself forced at last, by the
subject itself, to express my views on the organic and essentially
necessary connection between writing and language considered in their
broadest relation, and on the value of a scientific palaeography in the
investigation of language. Indeed, I could not refrain, at the close,
from referring to Egypt itself, where there seems to open such a
splendid and fertile field for this new science as never before in
Europe, or even in Asia. Thus, on one hand, I am attracted by the idea
of an Egyptian palaeography which cannot possibly be sought for except
in accordance with the universal laws of writing and language, and
therefore must be capable of rational scientific treatment. Yet, on the
other hand, I cannot avoid noticing the special obstacles, of other than
a scientific kind, which present themselves, and particularly the
precarious direction which might be permanently given to my studies by
an over-hasty decision. It is true that on this path also archaeology
and comparative philology would be the guides and companions whom I
should most desire. But in their Egyptian costume they would probably be
still less able to secure me a settled position in life, than in their
Greek and Roman dress, unless, in that case, I might consider myself
assured of substantial assistance from the government, and of a
situation in the public service in case I succeeded in fulfilling all
reasonable expectations. But if this were possible, and, above all, if I
had become convinced by examination of the authorities hitherto
accessible, and especially of Champollion’s grammar, that the
foundations had been so laid as to give hope of greater results to be
attained by conscientious and scientific treatment, then I would gladly
devote all my ability, time and energy to a subject, the advancement of
which may rightly lay claim to the most universal interest, although the
handling of it at present can only fall to the lot of a favored few.”
Bunsen sent an encouraging answer to this letter, which, like the diary
and the letters to Father Lepsius, did not deviate by one hair’s breadth
from the true circumstances and inclination of the writer. After the
young philologist and archaeologist had satisfied himself that new
researches might indeed be profitably based upon the preparatory work of
Champollion, and that great results could perhaps be attained in the
field of science thrown open by him, he decided thenceforth to devote
himself with all his energy to the study of Egyptology.
It is now time for us to cast a glance at this new science, and to point
out how far it had progressed, at the time when Lepsius first commenced
to devote himself to it and to continue the labors of Champollion, who
had died shortly before his arrival in Paris.
EGYPTOLOGICAL STUDIES,
AS LEPSIUS FOUND THEM IN 1834.
For nearly fifteen hundred years all direct knowledge of the
hieroglyphic writing of the ancient Egyptians had been lost, and nothing
more was known of the monuments of the time of the Pharaohs than was
incidentally mentioned by classic authors, or travellers who had visited
the Orient. It is true that in Rome and Constantinople stood obelisks
which had been transported to the imperial residences from the temples
of the Nile, while mummies and smaller Egyptian relics were preserved as
curiosities in the libraries and museums of Europe. But the interest in
the life of the ancient Egyptians, as well as in their art and science,
which had enjoyed such a high degree of esteem amongst the Greeks, had
been lost. And although, after the prime of the humanities had faded, an
Athanasius Kircher,[12] and after him other scholars such as the Dane
Zoega or Barthélemy, ventured to attempt the deciphering of the
inscriptions with which the Roman obelisks were covered, yet they were
soon forced to desist from their fruitless endeavors, for want of any
fixed basis from which they might have prosecuted their difficult
operations with success. Then the First Consul of the French Republic,
General Napoleon Bonaparte, undertook that adventurous march into Egypt
by which he hoped to break up English influence on African soil, to cut
off the nearest route to India from the British armies, and also to
gather laurels for himself. “For,” he had said, “the greatest glory in
the world is only to be won in the Orient.”
Every one knows the course of this campaign, which indeed ended in favor
of England, but brought far greater fame to France than to her opponent.
History does not forget such battles as that beneath the pyramids, and
in the annals of science a place of honor will ever be accorded to the
intellectual achievements of the French scholars who, during the end of
the previous and the beginning of our own century, followed the French
armies amidst a thousand hardships, dangers, and adverse circumstances.
It was by means of this expedition that the life of the old Egyptians
was to celebrate its resurrection. No one in Europe had suspected what a
wealth of monuments of the time of the Pharaohs had been preserved upon
the Nile. People watched with astonishment the arrival in Paris of great
folios full of superb drawings in which these were depicted, and
numerous volumes containing the descriptions of them. Excellent
reproductions of both afterwards found their way all over the world.
In 1799, in the course of excavations at the fort of St. Julienne at
Rosetta, in the northern Delta, the French officer of engineers,
Boussard, had found the remarkable tablet which was to become so famous
under the name of the Rosetta stone. The fortunes of war carried this
one monument alone, not to Paris, but to London, where it is worthily
conserved in the British Museum. It contains a sacerdotal decree, which
awards high honors to the fifth Ptolemy, Epiphanes, for his great worth,
and the benefits which he conferred on the country. It is written in
three different characters and languages.
Let us imagine, instead of the Egypt of that period, an Italian province
of the Austrian monarchy, and let us suppose that the clergy of the
place had drawn up a decree in honor of the imperial house; this might
perhaps be published in the old ecclesiastical language, Latin, in
Italian, and in the German language of the ruling house and its
officials. Precisely thus was the decree of Rosetta written; first in
the sacred language of the church, habitually rendered in the ancient
hieroglyphic character, and only employed in ecclesiastical writings,
next in the dialect current among the people, the demotic, which was
recorded in a special abbreviated character in which the original form
of the hieroglyphics is no longer to be recognized, and finally in the
Greek language and character of the Lagid ruling house and its
functionaries. Thus the Rosetta stone offered for investigation three
tolerably long texts, the first two of which had for foundation a
dialect of the ancient Egyptian language. These were in the two kinds of
writing, the distinction between which had already been noted by the
Greeks, (Herodotus, Diodorus, Clemens of Alexandria, etc.) and beneath
them stood the Greek translation. In a special treatise,[13] to which
the reader is referred, we have endeavored to show how two scholars,
working independently, arrived simultaneously at the same result of
correctly deciphering the principal hieroglyphic groups by a comparison
of the names of the Ptolemy, of Cleopatra and of Alexander,[14] which
were distinguished by being enclosed within elliptical ovals
(cartouches), and appeared on the bi-lingual tablet in both hieroglyphic
and Greek text. These two scholars were the gifted Frenchman,
Champollion, and the Englishman, Thomas Young, an investigator of the
first rank, whom difficulties served only to allure, and whose labors in
the domain of physiology and optics would have assured him an immortal
name. But Young arrived at results which were inaccurate in detail,
chiefly by means of mechanical and arithmetical comparison, and then
pursued his acquisitions no further, while Champollion applied all the
energies of his lifetime to the prosecution and development of his
epoch-making discovery. For this reason we ascribe it to him more
willingly and with greater justice than to Thomas Young, who, however,
undoubtedly presented his conclusions a little in advance of
Champollion. Each had arrived at his results quite independently of the
other, but, from the first, Champollion’s were the more correct, and
what with Young remained a splendid but incomplete exploit of the most
magnificent sagacity, was by the Frenchman prosecuted in the most
brilliant manner, and reduced to a correct system which, taken as a
whole, is still valid at the present day. The great master-pieces of
Champollion, the _Grammaire égyptienne_, (1836-41), and the
_Dictionnaire égyptien en écriture hiéroglyphique_, (1842-44), were
first published after his death (1832), and subsequently to Lepsius’
sojourn in Paris. They give an idea of the profound insight into the
ancient Egyptian language which had been attained by this scholar who
died so young. Had Fate granted him a longer life his great works would
have gained immensely in value, for his brother, Champollion-Figeac, who
had undertaken to edit a portion of the manuscripts[15] of the deceased,
which filled two thousand pages, although he fulfilled the task
conscientiously and gladly, was yet obliged to take in hand much that
was only half completed, and did not prove entirely equal to the
undertaking.
It is true that François Champollion, in his _Précis du système
hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens_, (Paris, 1824), had presented a
scheme of the hieroglyphic system of writing which, in its general
features, was correct. But this work, though extraordinary for that
time, was somewhat of the nature of a sketch, and criticism could find
in it sufficient grounds for entertaining sundry doubts and scruples.
Other scholars especially, who likewise styled themselves
Egyptologists, attacked the system of Champollion, and brought forward
other systems of their own in opposition to it. Amongst these guides to
the labyrinth, whose errors have long since been refuted and lapsed into
utter forgetfulness, Seyffarth of Leipsic lifted his voice most loudly.
Sickler, also, wished to explain the hieroglyphics by paranomasia. He
maintained that each one was intended to represent a whole series of
words of similar sound. Klaproth adhered firmly to his acrological
system, according to which each hieroglyphic could express all those
Coptic words that begin with the same sound with which the name of the
hieroglyphic begins.
What was a critically trained linguist to think of a science which had
not yet positively decided how to read or explain the characters of that
writing, which it was incumbent upon it to interpret, and which could
not even declare, with the concurrence of all its collaborators, what
language was the basis of the text which it nevertheless sought to
translate and expound?
It is difficult to understand how, after the appearance of the _Précis
du système hiéroglyphique_, these card-houses could have stood their
ground for a single month beside the well-founded edifice of
Champollion. But the more dubious the condition of affairs was with the
authors of these false systems, the louder did they raise their voices,
while Champollion, without regarding them, worked on with admirable
tranquillity, and added stone after stone to his great construction. The
principal parts of this he completed, but he was destined to bequeath
it to posterity without roof or ornaments.
At the time when Lepsius was invited to make the investigation of the
ancient Egyptian the occupation of his life, he had heard as much in
favor of Seyffarth, Klaproth and Sickler as of Champollion. From the
beginning he placed greater confidence in the latter. Yet he did well to
inform himself exactly as to the true state of Egyptology at that time
before placing at its disposal his energy, his ability, and his time. He
was of too prudent a disposition to embark for the journey through life
on a paper boat.
A deeper insight into the system of Champollion reassured him, and soon
led him to a decision. He might undertake the work with favorable
expectations, for Lepsius could feel himself far superior in
thoroughness of preparation and synthetic acumen to those intellectual
imitators of the giant Champollion, who, even during his lifetime, had
ventured forth with their own works. We shall have to tell with what
blunt sickles they destroyed the grain which they thought to reap.
Destiny had forbidden the master to train up worthy disciples, for after
the first professorship of Egyptology in the University of Paris had
been conferred upon him, and when he had scarcely entered on his office
as a teacher, the fine vigorous man of forty-one was overtaken by death.
Prior to this, however, he had already found disciples in Salvolini and
Rosellini. The latter had followed him to Rome, Turin and Naples, after
having taught at Pisa as Professor of Oriental Languages. The
extraordinary talent of E. de Rougé was developed later. Birch in London
and Leemans in Leyden were indeed his contemporaries, but should be
called his successors, not his pupils, and published their first
Egyptological works after his death, and after Lepsius had decided in
favor of this science.
When our friend entered the arena of Egyptological research the nature
of the demotic writing was as yet entirely undetermined, for although
the greatest Orientalist of this century, Silvestre de Sacy, had
addressed his attention to the demotic portion of the Rosetta stone, and
it had been examined not only by Thomas Young, but also by the sagacious
Swede, Åkerblad, neither they nor Champollion had been able to come to
any satisfactory understanding of it. Lepsius, also did little towards a
more thorough comprehension of the nature of the demotic dialect and
writing. It was H. Brugsch and E. Revillout who first discovered the
significance of the demotic, and proved the importance of this “writing
and language of the people” as a middle term between ancient Egyptian
and Coptic.