I
This line of hieroglyphs was for fourteen years the despair of all the
scholars who labored over the mysteries of the Rosetta stone: (Figure
1)
After five years of study Champollion translated it thus:
Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all the
temples, this upon pain of death.
That was the twenty-fourth translation that had been furnished by
scholars. For a time it stood. But only for a time. Then doubts began
to assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors.
Three years of patient work produced eleven new translations; among
them, this, by Grunfeldt, was received with considerable favor:
The horse of Epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this
upon pain of death.
But the following rendering, by Gospodin, was received by the learned
world with yet greater favor:
The priest shall explain the wisdom of Epiphanes to all these people,
and these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of death.
Seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely varying
renderings were scored—none of them quite convincing. But now, at last,
came Rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation
which was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct
version, and his name became famous in a day. So famous, indeed, that
even the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the
achievement itself make that not even the noise of the monumental
political event of that same year—the flight from Elba—was able to
smother it to silence. Rawlinson’s version reads as follows:
Therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of Epiphanes, but turn and
follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple’s peace, and soften
for thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death.