of Dendera, conveyed, as the wise call it,' by Lelorrain, in the very midst of which, and on the same stone, and consequently coeval with the rest, M. Champollion reads the name of Cæsar Autocrator, (Καισας Αυτοκρατωρ) to the great dismay of Count Forbin, and his little knot of philosophists, who flattered themselves with having obtained an irrefragable argument against the scripture chronology.

M. Champollion, we doubt not, is mistaken, in supposing that the Egyptians found it easy to form an alphabet out of their hieroglyphics. Taking our estimate of the difficulty attending such a process from the total failure of the Chinese to accomplish it out of their hieroglyphics, we should rather say that the original and unaided attempt of the Egyptians was syllabic rather than alphabetic; and Dr. Young seems to be of the same opinion. M. Champollion, however, says,

'C'est ainsi que parmi les hiéroglyphes phonétiques dont le son est déjà reconnu, l'épervier, qui exprimait la vie, l'ame, &, &&I, ahé, ahi, ou tout autre oiseau en général, en égyptien H, halêt, est probablement devenu le signe du son A; que l'hieroglyphe dit signe de l'eau, qui, dans les textes idéographiques, représente certainement la préposition égyptienne de, est devenu le signe de l'articulation N; que la bouche, en égyptien pɔ ro, a été choisie pour représenter la consonne grecque P, etc. Nous concevrons de même comment le son T a été exprimé indifféremment, soit par le segment de sphère, puisque ce caractère, dans l'écriture idéographique, est le signe de l'article féminin

ti ou té, soit par une main ouverte, qui se disait O tot (vola, manus) en langue égyptienne. Il en est de même de tous les autres sons rendus par des caractères différents, comme nous l'établirons bientôt, par des exemples plus nombreux. Cette multiplicité de signes n'a donc d'autre origine que les procédés propres à la méthode que nous venons d'exposer.'-p. 12.

That M. Champollion has little or no claim to originality in what he seems to think a discovery, and which we are sure his countrymen will blazon forth as such, will appear from the following passage in Doctor Young's account of Egypt, written some years ago.

"The square block and the semicircle answer invariably, in all the manuscripts, to characters resembling the P and T of Akerblad, which are found at the beginning of the enchorial name (of Ptolemy). The next character, which seems to be a kind of knot, is not essentially necessary, being often omitted in the sacred characters, and always in the enchorial. The lion corresponds to the Lo of Akerblad; a lion being always expressed by a similar character in the manuscripts; an oblique line crossed standing for the body, and an erect line for the tail: this was probably read not lo, but ole.

'The

'The next character is known to have some reference to "place," in Coptic ma; and it seems to have been read ma, or simply M; and this character is always in the running hand by the M of Akerblad's alphabet. The two feathers, whatever their natural meaning may have been, answer to the three parallel lines of the enchorial text, and they seem, in more than one instance, to have been read I, or E; the bent line probably signified great, and was read osh, or os; for the Coptic shei seems to have been nearly equivocal to the Greek E. Putting all these elements together, we have precisely PTOLEMAIOS, the Greek name.'-Ency. Brit. Sup. Art. Egypt.

Pursuing the subject still further, Doctor Young has analyzed the name of Berenice found on a ceiling at Karnack, which he makes out as partly syllabic, and partly alphabetic. The first character, he says, is a basket, which in Coptic is Bir; the oval, an eye without the pupil, E; the waved line, N; the feathers, I; the little footstool superfluous; the goose ke, or ken. We have, therefore,' he adds, literally, Birenice, or Birenicen.' The only difference is, that M. Champollion, without having recourse to syllabic sounds, finds it written in letters, BPNHKE, as under:

It would exceed our limits to follow M. Champollion through the principles on which he has constructed his alphabet; but we think it will appear, from what has already been said, to be, as we before observed, a mere extension of those previously adopted by M. Akerblad and Doctor Young; and even that the development of those principles in pp. 35-38 of his 'Letter,' had been anticipated by these gentlemen.

M. Champollion's alphabet will unquestionably enable any one to read the Greek and Roman names on the ancient monuments of Egypt, and may therefore be considered as of some value by archæologists: of its practical utility, however, beyond this point, we must confess that we are extremely sceptical; there being no connection whatever, as far as we can see, between the sense of the hieroglyphic when used as a phonetic, and as an ideographic character. Our readers may not be displeased, perhaps, to see it, though somewhat abridged. It is as follows.

VOL. XXVIII. NO. LV.

N..

Greek

We can by no means agree with M. Champollion in thinking that the ancient Egyptians made use of an alphabet to represent the sounds and articulations of certain words before the domination' of the Greeks and Romans; one reason assigned by him for this opinion is, that if the Egyptians had invented their phonetic writing in imitation of the Greek or Roman alphabet, they would naturally have established a number of phonetic signs equal to the known elements of those alphabets; whereas, in different places, different signs are employed to express the same letter. Now the same thing happens precisely among the Chinese, as we have already noticed; no two persons writing in their hieroglyphics the same word in the same characters. The transition is by no means so easy as M. Champollion seems to think. The Chinese have carried their plan of symbolical writing far beyond the point reached by the Egyptians, and have perfected a very curious and ingenious system of combining their symbols, which may be varied to an indefinite extent. Every one of their characters, too, has its sound, though the same sound may equally belong to a hundred different characters; and as it is necessary for a Chinese to know the sound of the characters of his language, as well as their sense, it is also necessary that he should have some determinate method of accomplishing this. How, then, does he proceed to ascertain the sounds of new characters, which are daily brought into use, as old ones are exploded? Not by an alphabet, as M. Champollion thinks he has proved the Egyptians to have done, but by a method which, though somewhat more clumsy, is perhaps not less efficient. It is by inserting in the dictionaries, after each character, two others that are well known; the initial vowels or consonants of the first, added to the final vowels or consonants of the latter, giving the sound of the unknown character. For instance, if the two explanatory characters should be phang and tsai, a Chinese would immediately know that the sound of the character he was seeking was phai; if, on the contrary, they stood reversed, as tsai and phang, the sound of the new character would be tsang. The two characters which are thus used to produce the sound of a third, are called the mother characters, whilst that produced is termed the daughter. Such is the resource of this ingenious people to supply the want of an alphabet; and when we consider how many volumes have been written by them on the subject of their language, and that the Thibetian alphabet is printed in all their books, we must hesitate before we can allow the Egyptians the knowledge of one of the greatest and most important inventions of man the means of expressing sounds and conveying ideas by the combination of a few simple letters. Bearing these difficulties in mind, we should be inclined to think that the

letter P must have been introduced into the name of Ptolemy by a Greek, as an Egyptian would naturally have written it Tolemy, unless, indeed, it was pronounced Pe-to-le-my,-in which case they would follow the sound by the ear, and write it as a word of four syllables. And precisely in this mode would a Chinese write (conformably with his unaccustomed organs) the English word strong, in three distinct syllables, se-te-long, over each of which he would place the sign of mouth, to show it was mere sound, and not that the magistrate had procured a dragon,' as three written symbols might be used to express the three syllables, which would bear this meaning.

Indeed, we are much inclined to believe that the writing of foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphics is the invention of the Greeks, who, not to shock the prejudices of the Egyptians, but at the same time desirous of recording the names of their princes on the everlasting monuments, consented to have them engraven in the characters of the country; or that it must have been done by Egyptian artists acquainted with the Greek language, or under the direction of Greeks.

M. Champollion, however, seems quite certain he shall be able to show, that long before the arrival of the Greeks in Egypt, the natives made use of the same hieroglyphico-phonetic signs, as were subsequently in use-but he adds, the development of this valuable and decisive fact belongs to my work upon the pure hieroglyphic writing;' wherein he is to prove that at a very remote period, and before the conquest of the country by Cambyses, the Egyptians were in the habit of writing in their hieroglyphic characters the proper names of people, countries, cities, sovereigns, and of individual strangers, the remembrance of whom it was thought important to insert in their historical texts, or in their monumental inscriptions. Nous verrons. If he will produce the name of Cambyses, as he has done those of Alexander and his successors, though even this would not prove the fact, we should feel inclined to lean to his supposition; but when he goes so far as to maintain that the Egyptians furnished the model on which the people of Western Asia constructed their alphabets, merely because all the letters of the Hebrew, the Chaldaic and Syriac alphabets bear names which are significant, and which the Greeks have adopted from the Phenicians, we consider him to be wandering into the mazes of theory, and venture to pronounce that he will lose himself in the inextricable labyrinth.

ART.