SECTION V.

THE WRITING OF THE EGYPTIANS.

INTRODUCTION.

THE invention and development of the art of writing is the second great historical fact of the primeval period in the department of language, and the third and last in the general course of early history. Although more recent than language or religion the previous existence of both of which it implies writing is yet unquestionably an inheritance transmitted to the Egyptians from their remote patriarchal ages; for on the monuments of the 4th Dynasty, i. e. of the beginning of the 5th century of the empire, we find the same system already matured and perfected, which we meet with on the monuments of the Tuthmoses and Psammetici. Even the names of the Kings of the 3rd Dynasty, of the 3rd and 4th century of the empire, exhibit the same system, and it is in this Dynasty that the only mention occurs, in the fragments of Manetho, of any improvement in the character. No one, however, acquainted with the artificial and complicated nature of that system, and who reflects on the tenacity with which the Egyptians adhered to their institutions, will believe for one moment that, in the first two or three centuries of the empire, they employed an essentially different style of writing. But this system of writing must likewise have had a history and a developmentand indeed an Egyptian one-it must have been brought to perfection in that same valley of the Nile, by the same race of men, in the course of carlier centuries, in the same form as those primeval monuments now exhibit it to us.

There is, however, another fact, and one of the

highest importance, to corroborate this argument.

We

may venture to assume that the hieratic character is nothing but the earliest contraction of the monumental, i. e. the hieroglyphical, invented for the use of the papyri and of common life. Its high antiquity is undoubted. It is found on certain fragments of linen, which appear to be part of the external linen wrapper of the body of King Nantef, portions of which still adhere to the gum or varnish lining of the wooden sarcophagus of this King in the British Museum. Some of these fragments having been detached, well formed hieratic characters, apparently part of the ritual, were discovered upon them. Nantef is the head of the 8th Dynasty. The inner part of the sarcophagus of Mentuhept (the fourth King of that Dynasty), copied by Wilkinson, was also covered with a hieratic ritual. M. Prisse has published the names of three Kings of the 3rd Dynasty (An, Ases, Senefru), found in a papyrus. Here we want the proof of its being a contemporaneous monument. But certainly the hieroglyphics hastily sketched on the stone-marks of the Pyramids of the 4th Dynasty contain the principle of the hieratic character.

There seems therefore to be no reasonable doubt of the fact, that the empire of Menes, with which our chronological history begins, possessed writing in a state essentially as perfect as it did language and mythology. If then we exhibit this system in the form in which it appears on the earliest extant monuments of the Old Empire, we may venture to assert that we have thereby brought into notice what is essentially one of the great records of the ante-historical time, and have added our mite to its elucidation. Throughout our remarks, therefore, this primitive epoch must be kept especially in view. The discoverers of the Egyptian character

*Revue archéol. t. ii. p. 13.

could not do otherwise than commence their researches at the other end, by deciphering the Greek and Roman names, through the hieroglyphic and demotic signs. But this retrograde method is at an end, now that the alphabet is discovered, and any attempt to follow it up must henceforth be held wholly inadmissible, as an anachronism in science. While While many still seem persuaded that the latest Roman names must remain the only certain groundwork for further researches, the monuments already interpreted prove that these names bear on their own face evidence not only of misapprehension but of wilful alteration and corruption, such as would have created universal horror among the hierogrammatists of the old Pharaohs. The case is certainly different where Coptic philology is concerned. It is precisely from the latest monuments that light is to be expected on the gradual formation of the modern Egyptian, as Schwartze's profound work demonstrates.

But in the study of the ancient language, the opposite course alone can from henceforth be considered the correct one. It is also the only historical course: an historical exposition must set out from the beginning. The restoration of the chronology, the foundation of which has been laid above, and the more detailed evidence of which will be supplied in the following books, places us even, if we be not greatly mistaken, in a position to establish generally the true import of the hieroglyphic texts, with much greater certainty than it would have been possible to do by reversing the order here preferred. The writing of the Old Empire, strange as it may sound to many, is better authenticated than that of the times of the Ptolemies and Romans.

We look, however, the more confidently for success in our efforts, by adhering to the method indicated in our preliminary remarks, which teaches us how to discover in the fact itself the mode, and, where possible, the law of its production.

The question we propose to solve by pursuing this

method is, whether the different elements of the Egyptian system of writing are of cotemporary origin? and, if this be answered in the negative, which are the more ancient?

But before answering these and similar questions, we must endeavour to trace the origin and progress of modern hieroglyphical discovery, as in itself one of the most remarkable phenomena in the intellectual history of our species.

A.

HISTORY OF MODERN HIEROGLYPHICAL DISCOVERY.-ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE TEXT OF CLEMENS OF ALEXANDRIA.

I. THE DISCOVERY OF THE ROSETTA TABLET.

WORK ON EGYPT.

THE GREAT FRENCH

In August, 1799, a French officer of artillery, by name Bouchart, while engaged with certain works on the redoubt of St. Julian, at Rosetta (Reschid), discovered the fragment of an oblong square slab of black syenitic basalt. It bore a triple inscription: the upper one of the three was in hieroglyphics, the lower in Greek, while that in the centre was in a character which the Greek text itself describes as the enchorial or popular. The Greek text showed that the tablet contained a recognition of the highest honours of the Pharaohs in the person of Ptolemy Epiphanes, by the priesthood assembled at Memphis. The value of the monument was at once perceived, and after having been copied, it was set apart and packed up. The victory of the English at Alexandria, and the surrender of the city, placed it in the hands of one of the most distinguished and zealous scholars of the day- Mr. William R. Hamilton, author of the " Ægyptiaca," then with the British army as Commissioner of the government. The trea

sure was despatched to England, and thus, by a fatality no less singular than striking, deposited in the British Museum instead of the Louvre. This seemingly insignificant stone shares with the great and splendid work, "La Description de l'Egypte," the honour of being the only result of vital importance to universal history, accruing from a vast expedition, a brilliant conquest, and a bloody combat for the possession of Egypt. That grand conception, the early forecast of a young hero

the colonisation of Egypt by Europeans, which Leibnitz had proposed to Louis XIV., and Bossuet, as a passage in his Universal History proves, urgently recommended had wholly failed, and seemed destined to disappear from the page of history, like a stroke upon the waters, without leaving a trace behind it. After a bloody and fruitlessly protracted struggle, upon which millions of treasure, and unnumbered hecatombs of human life were sacrificed, the cradle of civilisation, the land of monuments, was again unconditionally surrendered to the dominion of barbarians.

From the state of the contending parties any reservation in favour of their Christian fellow-worshippers could hardly be expected. Science, however, was honoured in England and in France, and even in the army of Napoleon was worthily, nay brilliantly, represented; yet it is an undeniable fact that, since that conquest, a greater number of monuments have been destroyed than in the previous centuries of Moslem rule. Under these circumstances, then, we may consider that splendid work on Egypt as a sort of sinoffering for all the blood which had been so vainly shed on her soil. The men of science in the suite of the conqueror, during his possession of the country, were actively employed, and that work, the foundation of which was then in reality laid, will remain to all times a crown of never failing laurel both for him and the French nation. In spite of its long delayed publication, and the tardy completion even of the earlier