be anticipated from them when the whole shall be rendered equally accessible by further victories which patient learning and assiduity may anticipate.

It is not necessary that we should follow in detail the laborious researches of Young, Champollion, and others, by which victory was at length achieved; or enter into the less pleasing field of controversy in relation to claims advanced by others to the merit, so justly due to Dr. Thomas Young, of having first mastered the problem and furnished the key on which all succeeding labours have depended. But one remarkable incident in the labours of Dr. Young must not be omitted, it seems so surprising that it might almost be deemed providential, if not miraculous. It seems indeed, to the reflective mind, to say that the appointed time had at length arrived when the secrets of Egyptian history were at length to be revealed, and to cast their reflective light on the darker pages of sacred and profane history. At the very time when Dr. Young was engaged in the investigation of the inscription of the Rosetta Stone, as detailed by him in his "Discoveries in Hieroglyphic Literature;" Mr., afterwards Sir, George Francis Grey, an intelligent traveller, returning from Egypt, in 1822, brought with him a letter from Sir William Gell, and deposited with Dr. Young some of the most valuable fruits of his researches among the ancient relics of Egyptian art, including several fine specimens of writing on papyrus, which he had purchased from an Arab at Thebes, in 1820. Previous to Dr. Young's obtaining possession of these, an individual of the name of Casati arrived at Paris, also bringing with him a parcel of Egyptian manuscripts, and among these Champollion observed one which bore in its preamble some resemblance to the enchorial text on the Rosetta Stone. This discovery naturally excited much interest; and Dr. Young having procured a copy of the papyrus, proceeded to attempt to decipher and translate it. In this he had already

made some progress when the arrival of Mr. Grey with new papyri threw an altogether unexpected light on his investigations. "Mr. Grey," says Dr. Young, "had the kindness to leave with me a box, containing several fine specimens of writing and drawing on papyrus; they were chiefly in hieroglyphics, and of a mythological nature; but the two which he had before described to me, as particularly deserving attention, and which were brought, through his judicious precautions, in excellent preservation, both contained some Greek characters, written apparently in a pretty legible hand. He had purchased them of an Arab at Thebes, in January 1820; and that which was most intelligible had appeared, at first sight, to contain some words relating to the service of the Christian church. Mr. Grey was so good as to give me leave to make any use of these manuscripts that I pleased; and he readily consented to their insertion among the lithographic copies of the 'Hieroglyphics, collected by the Egyptian Society,' which I undertook to superintend from time to time, in great measure for the private use of an association of my own friends, not sufficiently numerous to insure any permanent stability to its continuance.

"M. Champollion had done me the favour, while I was at Paris, to copy for me some parts of the very important papyrus, which I have before mentioned as having given him the name of Cleopatra; and of which the discovery was certainly a great event in Egyptian literature, since it was the first time that any intelligible characters of the enchorial form had been discovered among the many manuscripts and inscriptions that had been examined, and since it furnished M. Champollion at the same time with a name, which materially advanced, if I understood him rightly, the steps that have led him to his very important extension of the hieroglyphical alphabet. He had mentioned to me, in conversation, the names of Apollonius, Antiochus,' and Antigonus, as occurring among the wit

6

nesses; and I easily recognised the groups which he had deciphered; although, instead of Antiochus, I read Antimachus; and I did not recollect at the time that he had omitted the M.

"In the evening of the day that Mr. Grey had brought me his manuscripts, I proceeded impatiently to examine that which was in Greek only; and I could scarcely believe that I was awake, and in my sober senses, when I observed, among the names of the witnesses, ANTIMACHUS ANTIGENIS; and, a few lines further back, PORTIS APOLLONII; although the last word could not have been very easily deciphered, without the assistance of the conjec. ture, which immediately occurred to me, that this manuscript might perhaps be a translation of the enchorial manuscript of Casati; I found that its beginning was, ' A copy of an Egyptian writing. . . . .;' and I proceeded to ascertain that there were the same number of names intervening between the Greek and the Egyptian signatures that I had identified, and that the same number followed the last of them; and the whole number of witnesses appeared to be sixteen in each. The last paragraph in the Greek began with the words, 'Copy of the Registry;' for such must be the signification of the word ΠΤΩΜΑΤΟΣ, employed in the papyrus, though it does not appear to occur anywhere else in a similar signification. I could not, therefore, but conclude that a most extraordinary chance had brought into my possession a document which was not very likely, in the first place, ever to have existed, still less to have been preserved uninjured, for my information, through a period of near two thousand years; that this very extraordinary translation should have been brought safely to Europe, to England, and to me, at the very moment when it was most of all desirable to me to possess it, as the illustration of an original which I was then studying, but without any other reasonable hope of being able fully to comprehend it; this combination would,

but

in other times, have been considered as affording ample evidence of my having become an Egyptian sorcerer."

The reader can hardly fail to sympathize with the feelings expressed by Dr. Young at so strange and altogether marvellous a coincidence which thus threw into the hands of almost the only man in the world who could make use of it, the very document he would have desired to possess had he known of its existence. He may well refer to it as resembling the assumed exploits of Egyptian sorcery, for scarcely any tale of a fairy wishing-cap could surpass this singular incident in modern science. "The contents of Mr. Grey's Greek manuscript," Dr. Young continues, "are of a nature scarcely less remarkable than its preservation and discovery: it relates to the sale, not of a house or a field, but of a portion of the collections and offerings made from time to time on account, or for the benefit, of a certain number of MUMMIES, of persons described at length, in very bad Greek, with their children and all their households. The price is not very clearly expressed; but as the portion sold is only a moiety of a third part of the whole, and as the testimony of sixteen witnesses was thought necessary on the occasion, it is probable that the revenue, thus obtained by the priests, was by no means inconsiderable.

"The result, derived at once from this comparison, is the identification of more than thirty proper names as they were written in the running hand of the country. It might appear, upon a superficial consideration, that a mere catalogue of proper names would be of little comparative value in assisting us to recover the lost elements of a language. But, in fact, they possess a considerable advantage, in the early stages of such an investigation, from the greater facility and certainty with which they are identified, and from their independence of any grammatical inflexions, at least in the present case, by means of which they lead us immediately to a full understanding

of the orthographical system of the language, where any such system can be traced."

To these remarks Dr. Young adds, "The general inference to be derived from an examination of the names now discovered, is somewhat more in favour of an extensive employment of an alphabetical mode of writing, than any that could have been deduced from the pillar of Rosetta, which exhibits, indeed, only foreign names, and affords us, therefore, little or no information respecting the mode of writing the original Egyptian names of the inhabitants."

But it will be seen that it is not alone as a key to the phonetic character of the hieroglyphics of Egypt that these remarkable papyri are valuable. They are scarcely less interesting as historical documents, furnishing a clue to the religious and domestic habits of the ancient Egyptians, and to the customs and mode of sustentation of the priesthood. Remarkable, however, as the chance appears which placed this Greek autograph in the hands of almost the only man in England capable of turning it to good account, it was by no means a solitary example of an Egyptian legal document. From invaluable stores, secured by the enterprise and diligence of Sir George Grey, Dr. Young procured various Egyptian conveyances in the enchorial character, with separate Greek registries on the margin. By means of these, many additional examples of enchorial proper names were obtained in addition to the minute illustrations they afforded of the domestic history of Egypt, and of its singular customs and religious rights. Historians and archeologists have been long labouring to recover, from every dusty charter-chest and neglected record office, the chartularies of the middle ages, and rejoicing, as over discovered treasures, when they were so fortunate as to light on a parchment bearing date in the eleventh or twelfth century. But here were documents relating to the sale of lands in the neighbour