COLLECTIONS OF THE FRENCH. MR. DROVETTI. MR. CHAMPOLLION’S DISCOVERIES.
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. Although both the inscriptions appeared
to be almost illegible, yet I did not despair of being able, in a
proper light, and with sufficient patience, to decipher the greater
part; and I should have been tempted to remain a few days at Leghorn,
in order to make the experiment, if I could have obtained permission
from the merchants, to whose care the collection was entrusted. The
more, however, that I considered the importance of the only supplement
to the pillar of Rosetta, that then appeared to be in existence, the
more anxiety I felt to make some effort, to secure it from oblivion or
destruction; and with more simplicity, perhaps, than good policy, when
I returned to Pisa in the evening, I wrote a letter to MM. Mompurgo, of
which I shall here insert a translation.
“_Gentlemen_,
“Having fully reflected on the singular importance of the Greek
inscription, which I mentioned to you this morning, and the
irreparable misfortune that would be incurred, in case that the
pillar containing it should ever be lost by shipwreck, I have
determined to make you a proposal, which I hope you will not find
any impropriety in accepting.
“I am very desirous of sending an experienced artist from
Florence, in order to make two impressions in plaster, and two
tracings on paper, of this stone; upon condition, that they be
considered as the property of Mr. Drovetti, and remain in your
possession, until you have received his answer to the inquiry,
whether he will permit them to be sent to London, either for
myself or for the British Museum, and what price he would expect
to receive for them. And in case that he should not think proper
to fix such a price on them, as we might agree to pay, I am
willing to consent, that they should remain in his collection,
upon condition, however, that if this collection should ever
be reembarked, for conveyance by sea, they should be kept at
Leghorn, until the original stone should have arrived safely at
the place of its destination, in order to avoid the chance of
wholly losing this literary treasure by shipwreck.
“Whatever may be Mr. Drovetti’s decision, I trust that this
application, from one who flatters himself that he is the only
person living, that can fully appreciate the value of the object
in question, will at least not be disagreeable to him. I will
beg of you to send me an early answer, directed to Schneiderff’s
Hotel at Florence.
T. Y. Sec. R. S. Lond.
_Pisa, 5th Sept. 1821._”
MM. Mompurgo readily agreed to my proposal, and I engaged a
distinguished artist of Florence to undertake the performance of my
plan; but I believe he was accidentally prevented from fulfilling his
engagement. It appears, however, that his labour, as far as I was
concerned, would have been wholly lost; for Mr. Drovetti’s cupidity
seems to have been roused by the discovery of an unknown treasure,
and he has given me to understand, that nothing should induce him to
separate it from the remainder of his extensive and truly valuable
collection, of which he thinks it so well calculated to enhance the
price; and he refuses to allow any kind of copy of it to be taken.
But, as it often happens to those who are too eager to monopolize,
he has now outstood his market, and the pearl of great price, which
six months ago I would have purchased for much more than its value,
is now become scarcely worth my acceptance. I was principally anxious
to obtain from it a collateral confirmation of my interpretation of
the enchorial inscription of Rosetta; but having fortunately acquired
materials, from other sources, which are amply sufficient for this
purpose, I can wait, with great patience, for any little extension,
which my enchorial vocabulary might receive from this source. I had
inferred from a note, that had been sent me several years before,
respecting the stone of Menouf, by Mr. Jomard, that the first words of
the Greek inscription must have been ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙ ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΩΙ ΝΕΩΙ ΔΙΟΝΥΣΩΙ,
but this was all that the gentleman, who described it, had even
attempted to copy.
The first circumstance, that repressed my eagerness to obtain a copy
of Drovetti’s inscriptions, was the arrival of Mr. Casati at Paris,
with a parcel of manuscripts, among which Mr. Champollion discovered
one that considerably resembled, in its preamble, the enchorial text of
the pillar of Rosetta: and the value of this discovery was afterwards
almost miraculously multiplied, by the existence of a Greek translation
of the same manuscript, which has been brought to London by Mr. Grey.
Having had occasion, in the month of September last, to accompany some
friends in a short visit to Paris, I was very agreeably surprised with
several literary and scientific novelties of uncommon interest, and all
of them such as either had originated, or might have originated, from
my own pursuits. I had first the pleasure of hearing, at a meeting of
the Academy of Sciences, an optical paper read by Mr. Fresnel; who,
though he appears to have rediscovered, by his own efforts, the laws
of the interference of light, and though he has applied them, by some
very refined calculations, to cases which I had almost despaired of
being able to explain by them, has, on all occasions, and particularly
in a very luminous statement of the theory, lately inserted in a
translation of Thomson’s Chemistry, acknowledged, with the most
scrupulous justice, and the most liberal candour, the indisputable
priority of my investigations. In the course of the same week, I was
invited to sit next to Mr. Champollion junior, while he was reading,
to the Academy of Belles Lettres, a Memoir on the Analysis of the
Inscription of Rosetta: he, also, had been partly anticipated in his
results by what had been done in this country: though I could not help
fancying, that he had not so completely forgiven the injury, as his
countryman Mr. Fresnel appeared to have done. But Mr. Fresnel is the
friend of Arago, and nothing more requires to be said of his character
and sentiments.
I must, however, at once beg to be understood, that I fully and
sincerely acquit Mr. Champollion of any intentions actually
dishonourable: and if I have hinted, that I have received an impression
of something like a want of liberality in his conduct, I have only
thrown out this intimation, as an apology for being obliged to plead
my own cause, and not as having any right to complain of his silence,
or as having any desire or occasion to profit by his indulgence: at
the same time I am far from wishing to renounce his friendship, or to
forego the pleasure and advantage of his future correspondence.
At the beginning of my Egyptian researches, I had accidentally received
a letter from Mr. Champollion, which accompanied a copy of his work on
the state of Egypt under the Pharaohs, sent as a present to the Royal
Society: and as he requested some particular information respecting
several parts of the enchorial inscription of Rosetta, which were
imperfectly represented in the engraved copies, I readily answered his
inquiries from a reference to the original monument in the British
Museum: and a short time afterwards I sent him a copy of my conjectural
translation of the inscriptions, as it was inserted in the Archaeologia.
Of Mr. Champollion’s _Egypte sous les Pharaons_, the two volumes,
that have hitherto appeared, relate only to the geography of ancient
Egypt, and especially to the determination of the old Egyptian names of
places, as compared with the Greek and the Arabic, by the assistance of
Coptic manuscripts, and other intermediate documents. The work exhibits
considerable research, and some ingenuity: the author had devoted his
life to one very extensive pursuit, and he proposed to illustrate
every part of his subject, by the most minute investigation of every
circumstance, that could be brought to bear upon it. The undertaking,
commenced on so large a scale, appears to have proceeded but slowly;
nor is it probable that the life of any man would be sufficient for its
complete execution.
With regard to the enchorial Inscription, Mr. Champollion appeared
to me to have done at that time but little. A few of the references,
that he made to it, seemed to depend entirely upon Mr. Akerblad’s
investigations, although, as I have formerly had occasion to remark, it
was _tacitly_ that he adopted Mr. Akerblad’s conclusions. I imagine,
however, that he even now retains some erroneous prepossessions, which
he had imbibed from Mr. Akerblad, although, very possibly, without
recollecting their exact origin; in particular respecting the adoption
of some Greek epithets, without translation, into the enchorial
inscription: this question, however, I trust is now set at rest, by
means of some later discoveries.
Mr. Champollion continued to reside at Grenoble, where he had some
employment in the public library, till the beginning of 1821. I had not
a convenient opportunity of sending him any of my later papers; and
it was not till after he had left Grenoble, that he read the Article
EGYPT of the Supplement of the Encyclopaedia, into which their contents
were condensed. He had been devoting himself, in the mean time, to
the uninterrupted study of the enchorial inscription, and he appears
to have discovered, before he came to Paris, the original identity of
these characters with the imperfect imitations of the more distinct
hieroglyphics. Whether he made this discovery before I had printed my
letters in the Museum Criticum, I have no means of ascertaining: I have
never asked him the question, nor is it of much consequence, either to
the world at large or to ourselves. It may not be strictly just, to
say, that a man has no right to claim any discovery as his own, till he
has printed and published it: but the rule is at least a very useful
one. It is always easy to publish such an account of a discovery, as to
establish the right of originality, without affording much facility to
the pursuits of a competitor: although it is generally true, that not
only honesty, but even liberality, is the best policy.
Passing by, however, what I had already done, by far the most important
to me was what I had not done, and there was enough of this to satisfy
me, that Mr. Champollion was at least capable of doing many things,
with respect to which his claim of actual priority might appear more
than doubtful.
He had found, in the first place, among the multitude of Egyptian
papyri, which he had taken the trouble to copy at length, with the
permission of their various possessors, one in particular, of which a
series of the chapters were pretty obviously numbered in the enchorial
character, the series extending, with a few interruptions, from 1
to 20. He had already applied this discovery to the illustration of
some parts of the pillar of Rosetta: and I have since derived at least
equal advantage from it, in the examination of the enchorial papyrus of
Casati.
He had also discovered a fragment of a pillar formerly in the
possession of the Duc de Choiseul, which exhibited the character for
a month, followed by several various groups, together with different
numbers, evidently indicative of days; so that to the names of the
three months, which I had discovered, he was enabled to add at least
four more, though without completely ascertaining to which of the
months these new symbols belonged.
Mr. Champollion had ascertained, in the third place, the analogy of one
of the manuscripts, purchased of Casati, to the enchorial inscription
of Rosetta, and he had obtained from it, without difficulty, the mode
of writing the name Cleopatra in that character. He did not, however,
then mention to me the important consequences which he had derived from
this discovery; these, it seems, were the subject of a short paper read
to the Academy the succeeding Friday; and it will be proper to extract
a more particular account of them, from his Letter to Mr. Dacier, since
printed; in which I did certainly expect to find the chronology of my
own researches a little mere distinctly stated.
“The hieroglyphical text of the inscription of Rosetta,” he observes,
(p. 6), “exhibited, on account of its fractures, _only the name
of Ptolemy_. The obelisc found in the Isle of Philae, and lately
removed to London, contains also the hieroglyphical name of _one
of the Ptolemies_, expressed by the same characters that occur in
the inscription of Rosetta, surrounded by a ring or border, and it
is followed by a second border, which must necessarily contain the
proper name of a woman, and of a queen of the family of the Lagidae,
since this group is terminated by the hieroglyphics expressive of the
_feminine_ gender; characters which are found at the end of the names
of all the Egyptian goddesses without exception. The obelisc was fixed,
it is said, to a basis bearing a Greek inscription, which is a petition
of the priests of Isis at Philae, addressed to King Ptolemy, to
Cleopatra his sister, and to Cleopatra his wife. Now, if this obelisc,
and the hieroglyphical inscription engraved on it, were the result of
this petition, which in fact adverts to the consecration of a monument
of the kind, the border, with the feminine proper name, can only be
that of one of the Cleopatras. This name, and that of Ptolemy, which
in the Greek have several letters in common, were capable of being
employed for a comparison of the hieroglyphical characters composing
them; and if the similar characters in these names expressed in both
the same sounds, it followed that their nature must be entirely
phonetic.”
This course of investigation appears, indeed, to be so simple and so
natural, that the reader must naturally be inclined to forget that any
preliminary steps were required: and to take it for granted, either
that it had long been known and admitted, that the rings on the pillar
of Rosetta contained the name of Ptolemy, and that the semicircle and
the oval constituted the female termination, or that Mr. Champollion
himself had been the author of these discoveries.
It had, however, been one of the greatest difficulties attending the
translation of the hieroglyphics of Rosetta, to explain how the groups
within the rings, which varied considerably in different parts of
the pillar, and which occurred in several places where there was no
corresponding name in the Greek, while they were not to be found in
others where they ought to have appeared, could possibly represent the
name of Ptolemy; and it was not without considerable labour that I had
been able to overcome this difficulty. The interpretation of the female
termination had never, I believe, been suspected by any but myself: nor
had the name of a single god or goddess, out of more than five hundred
that I have collected, been clearly pointed out by any person.
But, however Mr. Champollion may have arrived at his conclusions,
I admit them, with the greatest pleasure and gratitude, not by
any means as superseding my system, but as fully confirming and
extending it. And here I am compelled to advert to a note of Mr.
Champollion’s, which I fear will be thought to go a little beyond
a _tacit adoption_ of my opinions, and to approach very near to an
unintentional misrepresentation. “It must, without doubt, (p. 15,)
have been by the form of this symbol, which has some resemblance to
the figure of a basket, that Dr. Young was led to recognise the name
of Berenice in the border that actually contains it. But he was of
opinion that the hieroglyphics constituting proper names were employed
as expressing whole syllables, that they were therefore a sort of
_rebuses_, and that the first character of the name of Berenice, for
example, represented the syllable BIR, which means a _basket_ in
the Egyptian language. This mistaken supposition has vitiated, in
great measure, the phonetic analysis which he has attempted of the
names of _Ptolemy_ and _Berenice_, in which, notwithstanding, he has
recognised the phonetic values of four of the characters: these are
the P, one of the forms of the T, one of the forms of the M, and the
I; but the whole of his syllabic alphabet, established from these two
names only, was completely inapplicable to the great number of proper
names phonetically expressed on the various monuments of Egypt ...
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Supplement, IV. Pt. i. Edinb. Dec. 1819.”
Now, if Mr. Champollion had attended to my expressions, he must have
perceived that it was _not_ by any _resemblance_ of an imaginary nature
that I was “led to recognise the name of Berenice;” but by external
evidence only. “The appellation SOTERES,” I have observed, Art. 57,
“as a dual, is well marked in the inscription of Rosetta, and the
character, thus determined, explains a long name in the temple at
Edfou ... 58. The wife of Ptolemy Soter, and mother of Philadelphus,
was BERENICE, whose name is found on a ceiling at KARNAK, in the
phrase, “Ptolemy and ... Berenice, the _saviour gods_.” In this name we
appear to have another specimen of syllabic _and alphabetical_ writing
combined, in a manner not extremely unlike the ludicrous mixtures of
words and things with which children are sometimes amused; for however
Warburton’s indignation might be excited by such a comparison, it
is perfectly true that, occasionally, “the sublime differs from the
ridiculous by a single step only.” ... I have then proceeded to state,
as conjectural _inferences_, the syllabic analogies: but instead of
_four_ letters which Mr. Champollion is pleased to allow me, I have
marked, in a subsequent chapter of this Essay, _nine_, which I have
actually specified in different parts of my paper in the Supplement:
and to these he has certainly added _three_ new ones; or _four_, if he
chooses to reckon the E as a fourth. I allow that I suspected the B,
the L, and the S, to be sometimes used syllabically: but the analogy
of these characters with the enchorial alphabet was so well marked,
that my attempt to refine upon it could not easily have embarrassed
any one in making the application. Mr. Champollion has never been led,
in any one instance, from the Egyptian name of an object, to infer
the phonetic interpretation, that is, the alphabetical power of its
symbol: but the letters having once been ascertained, he has ransacked
his memory or his dictionary for some name that he thought capable
of being applied to the symbol: and not always, as it appears to me,
in the most natural manner: I should prefer, for instance, the word
HRERI, a flower, as making the R, to the name of pomegranate, which,
it seems, was sometimes called ROMAN or ERMAN. I must also observe
that my intention, in placing the Coptic names in my vocabulary of
hieroglyphics, was to assist in tracing any such analogies that
might suggest themselves: and in the instance of AM or EM, N. 123,
the reading approaches very near to one of the letters, added by Mr.
Champollion to my alphabet.
With respect to the diversity of characters representing the same
letter, it will be observed that I have marked _three_ forms of the
M, _three_ of the N, with a fourth that was suggested to me by Mr.
Bankes, _two_ of the P or PH, and _two_ of the S. Of these last, I
cannot omit to observe, that Mr. Champollion has devoted at least a
page of his letter (p. 13, 14) to the demonstration of the identity
of _these same_ forms: and that it would not have been unnatural to
refer, in a single line of that page, to the assertion of the same
identity, which I had made in the article EGYPT, No. 102. “The bent
line is often exchanged in the manuscripts for the divided staff, and
both are represented in the running hand by a figure like a 9 or a 4.”
The remainder of the forms, assigned to the letters, are all due to Mr.
Champollion’s ingenious and successful investigations.
It so happens, that in the lithographical sketch of the obelisc of
Philae, which had been put into my hands by its adventurous and
liberal possessor, the artist has expressed the first letter of the
name of Cleopatra by a T instead of a K, and as I had not leisure
at the time to enter into a very minute comparison of the name with
other authorities, I suffered myself to be discouraged with respect to
the application of my alphabet to its analysis, and contented myself
with observing, that if the steps of the formation of an alphabet
were not exactly such as I had pointed out, they must at least have
been very nearly of the same nature. In return, I was complimented
for my candour, while I ought, perhaps, to have been reproved for
my timidity. If, however, I may judge from my late correspondence
with Mr. Champollion, he does not appear to be altogether so averse
to the admission of syllabic characters on some occasions, as his
note upon my “false point of departure” appears to imply: and I think
he will find, in the evidence now first made public, respecting the
enchorial character, some additional grounds for enforcing the opinion.
I shall insert a specimen of one variety of each of the names which
he has succeeded in deciphering: observing only, that his alphabet
could scarcely have agreed so well with the various combinations
of these names, as it appears to do, if it had not been in great
measure correct: and that I also fully agree with Mr. Champollion in
his interpretation of the phrase of the Pamfilian obelisc, which he
translates, WHO HAS RECEIVED THE KINGDOM FROM VESPASIAN HIS FATHER:
the same phrase occurring on the pillar of Rosetta, as well as on
the obelisc of Philae, where it had served to correct my later
opinion respecting the symbol for FATHER. It is here evident that the
expression cannot relate, as Mr. St. Martin imagines it must have done
in the inscriptions of Rosetta, to the immediate installation of a son
by _the hands_ of his father; but that the right of inheritance only
was implied by it. I am not however convinced, by the coherence of
this passage, that the greater part of the obelisc was ever intended
by the sculptor to convey a connected meaning; and at any rate the
explanation confirms the opinion, that I had expressed, respecting the
Roman origin of the workmanship. There are a few of the busts, now
placed in the magical gallery of the Vatican, which appeared to me, on
the contrary, to have been brought from Egypt with their genuine and
ancient inscriptions, and to have had their features newly formed, and
more highly polished, by Roman artists of the age of Adrian, in whose
villa at Tivoli they were principally found.
Mr. Champollion has lately had the goodness to communicate to me, by
letter, some suggestions, which, I conclude, he is on the point of
making public, and I therefore take the liberty of mentioning them,
as far as I think them at all admissible, though, perhaps, a little
prematurely. He is disposed to refer the name, which I consider
as that of the father of Amasis, to SESOSTRIS, as synonymous with
RAMESSES, which he thinks the characters are probably intended to
express phonetically. Now I readily allow, that where this name
is written fully and accurately, as it is repeatedly found in Mr.
Bankes’s great catalogue of Abydos, it may without much violence be
read nearly as Mr. Champollion proposes, “the approved by Phthah,
Ramesses,” or “the counterpart of Phthah, Ramesses;” the first part
of the group undergoing several synonymous variations, while the end
remains unchanged; although, if this reading were established, I
should refer the first name to Amenophis or MEMNON, who was the son
of Ramesses, or of Armesses called Miamun; and to whom the tomb of my
Amasis is said to be attributed in the Greek and Latin inscriptions
which are found in it; who is also said to have built the palace of
Abydos, on which my Amasis evidently appears as the founder; who is
more easily understood than Amasis to be prior to the Psammetichus
mentioned at Ebsambul; and, who is more likely than Amasis to have been
at Berýtus, or Nahr el Kelb, where Mr. Wyse, as I am informed by Sir
William Gell, has distinctly observed this name, accompanied by the
nail-headed characters. All these reasons are more than sufficient to
counterbalance the single assertion of Pliny; and we should be obliged
to change my Psammis, according to his place in Mr. Bankes’s table of
kings, into the Armais of Manetho; though the _vocal_ Memnon of the
numerous inscriptions would be converted by this comparison into Queen
Rathotis, or we should be obliged to leave out three of Manetho’s
list, to bring him up to the Amenophis who is called the Trojan Memnon
by that author. All this is, indeed, a little alluring, and several
suppositions might be introduced to overcome the difficulties: but
unfortunately the fundamental supposition appears to be liable to
an insurmountable objection; that the circle, which Mr. Champollion
considers as equivalent to the RE or RA of Ramesses, is also the first
character of each of the seventeen names immediately preceding it, and
indeed of every other in the catalogue, that remains unmutilated at the
beginning.
I am therefore sorry to say that I cannot hitherto congratulate Mr.
Champollion on the success of his attempts to carry his system of
phonetic characters into the very remotest antiquity of Egypt: he
appears, however, to have a better prospect of elucidating some of the
Persian names, having, as he informs me, been able to identify that of
XERXES, both in the hieroglyphics, and in the nail-headed characters,
by means of a vase of alabaster, on which both are found together. This
is, indeed, a wonderful opening for literary enterprise; and I am even
inclined to hope, from Mr. Champollion’s latest communications, that he
will find some means of overcoming the difficulties that I have stated
respecting the Pharaohs, for he assures me, that he has identified the
names of no less than THIRTY of them, and that they accord with the
traditions of Manetho, and, as far as he can judge, with the notes
that I had sent him of an attempt that I had formerly made to assign
temporary names to the kings enumerated at Abydos, in which those of
all the later ones began with the syllable RE. He will easily believe
that I wish for a satisfactory answer to my own objections: and, in
fact, the further that he advances by the exertion of his own talents
and ingenuity, the more easily he will be able to admit, without any
exorbitant sacrifice of his fame, the claim that I have advanced to a
priority with respect to the first elements of all his researches; and
I cannot help thinking that he will ultimately feel it most for his own
substantial honour and reputation, to be more anxious to admit the just
claims of others than they can be to advance them.