At the time of your travels in the East, our "Egyptian Society" had just been founded at Cairo; and the encouragement afforded by Mr. Randolph and yourself, to our then embryo institution, is there on record. Since that period, our Society has become in Egypt, the central point of researches into all that concerns its most interesting regions; but, it was not till 1839, that the larger works of the new Archeological School were in our library; or that it was in my EARLY EGYPTIAN HISTORY, power to become one of CHAMPOLLION's disciples. In fact, it was on In dedicating to you, my dear Sir, the first CHAPTERS ON HIEROLOGY, that have ever issued from an American Press, I acquit myself of a gratifying duty toward a gentleman who, by the deep interest he takes in Egyptian subjects, has been induced to render manifold and indispensable assistance to the Author. When we parted at Cairo, in the spring of 1836, we little expected that circumstances would allow me the pleasure of sojourning in your vicinity; still less did we contemplate, that I should turn my almost exclusive attention to Nilotic paleography. Some of the causes are hereinafter explained, with the others you are acquainted. not till about 1839, that the brilliant results of the recent, and still progressing discoveries were accessible in Egypt; while, at the present day, the knowledge of these results is confined to a compa ratively limited circle in Europe. A mass of erudite works, put forth by eminent Savans, chiefly at the expense of enlightened gov. ernments, have teemed of late years from the European press, and the most important of these (Rosellini and others) now embellish your Library. It is to the effective aid, and fostering counsel of our mutual friend, RICHARD RANDOLPH, ESQ., of Philadelphia, and yourself, that the public in this country are indebted, for whatever of value and novel interest may be found in this unpretending essay; and, through these marks of consideration is the Author enabled, to present to the American people, some of the more salient points of recent Hiero. glyphical discoveries, in a form corresponding to his free-trade principles. Our united object is to popularize information, that may tend to a better appreciation of these abstruse subjects, than has hitherto been deemed feasible; as well as to induce abler hands to supply defi. ciencies. These CHAPTERS will, it is believed, serve the Theologian, Ethno. logist, Historian, and general reader, as a KEY to the successful la bors of the Champollionists; while their publication and general diffusion, through the elaborate machinery of the "New World" press, will enable the lecturer to spare his future audiences the oral infliction of much preliminary, though indispensable matter, by removing the prevalent doubts" IF Hieroglyphics be translated." The instruction and kind assistance I have received from the learned ethnographer, SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, ESQ., M. D., of Philadelphia, and from the profound philologist, the HoN. JOHN PICKERING, of Boston, have been severally acknowledged. To Professor CHARLES ANTHON, of Columbia College, I am under great obligations, for much classical information, and for free access to his valuable Library. As the matter, spread over the following pages, was originally prepared for delivery in oral Lectures, it has required some labor to change it into its present form; and for suggestions on this point, as well as for many literary essentials, I owe my best thanks to my friend, E. S. GOULD, ESQ., of this city. In their pristine shape of Lectures, they were, during December and January last, listened to with much indulgence, by an intellectual and cultivated audience, in Boston, and spoken of with favor by the Press of that city. For the advantages accruing from this successful "début," I shall ever preserve a grateful remembrance toward JOSEPH W. INGRAHAM, Esq., the well informed Topographer of Palestine; whose disinterested coöperation was of material assistance to me. With renewed protestations of sincere attachment, I remain, dear Sir, Your obliged and obedient Servant, GEORGE R. GLIDDON. "GLOBE HOTEL," (New York,) March 15, 1843. asunder; and until the chivalrous cavalry of the "Ghuz "* had been A SERIES OF CHAPTERS ON EARLY EGYPTIAN HISTORY, scattered, like chaff before the wind, by the concentrated volleys of &c. &c. &c. CHAPTER FIRST. INTRODUCTORY. a French hollow square-their hitherto victorious sabres shivering on contact with the European bayonet. While however, in spite of these manifold obstacles, the travelling enthusiast, or the scientific explorer, collected in the valley of the Nile the information, which afforded to the scholar in Europe some crude and uncertain materials wherewith to prosecute his researches; the occasional transmission to European cabinets of some relics of Egyptian civilization, furnished evidences of the immense progress, which, at an ancient, but then undefined, period, had been made in all arts and sciences by the Egyptians. With the aid of such cor. roborations of the misshapen mass of classical knowledge, expended, from the days of Homer, in an attempted explanation of Egyptian Archæology, the attention of the most learned of all nations was di. rected to the Antiquities of Egypt; and, although in Europe, these particular inquiries recommenced probably about three hundred years ago; yet the 18th century was fruitful, beyond all preceding periods, in ponderous tomes, purporting more or less to cast some light on the important, but conflicting traditions of that country. "Amicus Socrates, Amicus Plato, sed magis Amica Veritas." THE great Expedition, that, in 1798, left the shores of France for Egypt, seemed, under the guidance of the mighty genius of Napoleon, destined to create an Oriental Empire, wherein the children of the Frank and Gaul would have sustained a supremacy over the Northwestern provinces of Asia and Africa, equal to that which has been established in the Eastern Hemisphere, by the Anglo-Saxon race. This enterprise was, however, fated to encounter obstacles, that, in 1800-1, turned the energies of Buonaparte into an European channel. How comprehensive, nay unbounded, were the projects of the Commander-in-chief for Asiatic and African conquest, is now a mat- The Greek, the Hebrew, the Roman, the Armenian, the Indian, ter of History; although, after the lapse of forty years, it can scarcely and the Coptic authorities were consulted. Passages, in themselves yet be said, that we are acquainted with the limit of his matured irreconcileable, were with more ingenuity than success collated, ana. schemes in regard to Oriental subjugation, nor have we completelylyzed, and mutually adjusted: but rather to the personal satisfaction sounded the depths of his penetration into Eastern political futurities. of the compiler, than to the correct elucidation of any one given By the hand of inscrutable Providence, the sword of another Euro- idea on Ancient Egypt, transmitted to us by these classical writers. pean nation was thrown into the opposite scale; and the French Still, the spirit of inquiry was awakened; the lamp of investigation Expedition to Egypt lives but in the memories of its few surviving was partially lighted; the learned world became gradually more and actors-its military objects unaccomplished-its territorial aggrand- more familiarized with the subject; and, at the present hour, if we izements unattained-though the moral effect, consequent on these laugh at the conclusions at which some of these students arrived, we events, and now implanted in the minds of Eastern Nations, can must still render to them full credit for the profundity of their futile never be obliterated. investigations, and admire the patient perseverance and resolution with which they grappled with mysteries, the solution whereof was to them as hopeless in expectation, as abortive in success. In the quiet of his cabinet, as in the turmoil of political conflict, Napoleon never forgot the cause of Science, or the patronage and advancement of Literature and the Arts; and, amid the roar of his artillery, or the martial music of his camps, his mandate prompted, and his eye controlled the savans of France, while his finger directed their laborious efforts to the scrutiny of Egypt and her Monuments. The grave has closed over the Conqueror-the events of his period are gradually receding from the memory of man, to survive on the page of the chronicler; but an impetus was given to Egyptian research by Napoleon-an impress was stamped by him on Hiero. glyphical studies, for which time will award him commensurate honor. We are now only beginning to derive a portion of the advantages accruing, from these events, to our inquiries into Early History. Ages yet slumbering in the womb of time, and generations yet unborn will perhaps enjoy the full effulgence of that light, of which, in our day, but the first gleams have reached the world. The circumambient darkness, that for two thousand years not only baffled every inquiry into primeval history, but rendered Egypt, her time-worn edifices, her ancient inhabitants, their religion, arts, sciences, institutions, learning, language, history, conquests and domin. ion, almost incomprehensible mysteries, has now been broken; and the translation of the sacred Legends, sculptured on monumental vestiges of Pharaonic glory, enables us now to define and to explain, with tolerable accuracy, these once-recondite annals, that were to the Romans "a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." It is the object of the present essay to give a summary of the RESULTS of Hieroglyphical researches, after a brief explanation of the process by which these results have been achieved. Vain would it be, without ransacking the libraries of every civilized country, and selecting from their dusty shelves the vast accumulation of works, published by the learned and the unlearned during the last three centuries, to attempt a detailed specification of the extraordinary aberrations of human intellect; those manifold and incomprehensible misconceptions on Ancient Egypt; that, at the present hour, excite our surprise and our regret. The mere mechan. ical labor of such an undertaking would be more tedious than any literary enterprise we can well conceive; while its result would be unprofitable, beyond the moral it would teach. In the present Chapters, a very few of such sapient illusions are enumerated; affording, however, but a faint idea of their huge amount: and it may be laid down as a rule, without exception prior to the year 1790, that no original light is to be obtained from European authors of the last gener. ation, whose works are merely repetitions of the few truths and the many fallacies transmitted to us by Greco-Roman antiquity. The following paragraphs will give a general view of the case. In the year 1636, a learned Jesuit, the celebrated Father Kircher,t published a mighty work, in six ponderous folios, entitled "Edipus Egyptiacus," wherein imagination took the place of common sense, and fantastic conjecture was substituted for fact. Kircher explained every Egyptian Hieroglyphic by the application of a sublimity of mysticism, from which to the ridiculous the transition is immediate. Dark and impenetrable as had been the "Isiac Veil," before Kir. cher directed his gigantic efforts to its removal, we do him but justice in declaring, that he succeeded in enveloping Egyptian studies with an increased density of gloom, it has taken nearly two hundred years to dissipate! Kircher had his disciples, his followers and his ad. mirers-he founded a school of mysticism, in which the students out. vied their master in love of the incomprehensible; and, abandoning the simplest elements of reason and sound criticism, they all pre. tended to discover, or to have the hope of finding, in the Papyri, Obelisks, Idols, Mummy Cases, Weapons, household utensils, &c. of the Ancient Egyptians, all the recondite combinations of cabalistic science, and the monstrous reveries "of a demonomania the most refined." As an instance: Prior to the year 1800, the published notices of the few travellers, who had ventured to approach the ancient ruins of Egypt, were so confused in description, so ambiguous in detail, so erroneous in at tempts at explaining their origin and design, that the fact, that these monuments merited more than ordinary investigation, was the only point on which European savans were able to coincide. Paul Lucas, Shaw, Volney, Savary, Norden, Sonnini, Pococke, Clarke, Maillet, Bruce and others, whose names are precious to the lovers of adventure, of research and general science, had explored as much as their The Pamphilian Obelisk, rëerected, in 1651, in the Piazza Navona respective circumstances permitted; and great are the merits of their at Rome by Pope Innocent the 10th, was brought to Europe by the works but the accumulation of knowledge, gained in the lapse of Roman Emperors. It contains, among other subjects, the following half a century, has so thoroughly revolutionized opinion, that it is oval. scarcely possible to refer to the majority of these authors without a smile. That victim of ignorance and slander, the enthusiastic Bruce, is perhaps the most prominent exception to the above rule; although only now receiving the mournful tribute of respect and gratitude, with which a later generation hallows his memory, while it reprobates his detractors. 2010 -REDUCTION (Phonetic Hieroglyphics.) (Latin pro AUTOKRATOR nunciation.) EMPEROR. (English meaning.) The works of travellers, before the year 1800, had done little beyond establishing the existence of immense vestiges of antiquity in that country, without affording much else of value in regard to them. Egypt, under the turbulent government of the Memlooks, was unsafe to strangers; while Muslim arrogance and intolerancy, with the then-unsubdued pride of Turkish fanaticism, presented barriers to emblematically, "the author of fecundity and of all vegetation, is This Cartouche, according to Kircher's interpretation expressed European explorers, which it required unusual skill and intrepidity Osiris, of which the generative faculty is drawn from heaven into to encounter. Egypt was then "a sealed book," whose pages could not be opened, until Napoleon's thunderbolts had riven the clasps * Arabice-Memlooks. † See Champ. Precis, and Spineto's Lectures. king Saint Mop-| The same obelisk contains the following oval also-viz. tha? An Egyptian genius invented by Kircher himself! KAI SAROS TOM I TI A NOS SE BAS TO S CÆSAR DOMITIAN Kircher translates it-"The beneficent Being, who presides over generation, who enjoys heavenly dominion, and fourfold power, commits the atmosphere, by means of Moptha, the beneficent (principle of ?) atmospheric humidity unto Ammon, most powerful over the lower parts (of the world,) who, by means of an image and appropriate ceremonies, is drawn to the exercising of his power." (!) The Pamphilian obelisk contains in its legends "Son of the Sun, Lord of the Diadems (i. e. Ruler of Rulers) Autocrator Cæsar Domi. tian Augustus"-besides the usual titles found on Egyptian Obelisks. These monuments are granite monoliths, cut by order of the kings of Egypt; and were placed, always in pairs, before the entrances of temples or palaces, to record that such kings had built, increased in extent, repaired, or otherwise embellished these edifices. This was, however, cut at Syene, in Roman times, in honor of Domitian. According even to a more recent authority, quoted in the Precis, of the year 1821 () "Genoa-Archipiscopal press," this identical obelisk preserves the record of the triumph over the Impious, ob. tained by the adorers of the most Holy Trinity, and of the Eternal Word, under the government of the 6th and 7th kings of Egypt, in the 6th century after the deluge." This obelisk was cut in Egypt about eighty years after Christ. By the above interpretation, the doctrines of Christianity must have existed some 2500 years before its founder. And one of the pious adorers and good Christians, who must thus have ruled in Egypt, was, in later times, (about 970 B. C.) Shishak-or SHESHONK, who, according to hieroglyphical legends at Karnac, conquered the "kingdom of Judah;" and, according to 2nd Chron. XII, 1st to 10th verses, and 1st Kings, XIV. 25th, deposed Rehoboam, plundered Jerusalem, desecrated the Temple, and removed the golden bucklers from the sanctuary with the treasures of the house of David! attempt had been made to give facsimile copies of hieroglyphica texts. George Zoega was the first who suggested, that the elliptica ovals (now termed "Cartouches,") containing groups of then-un known characters, were probably proper names; although he wa not aware, that (with the exception of a few instances, wherein they contain the names of Deities) they exclusively inclose the titles o names of Pharaohs. A similar idea was maintained, I believe, by the Abbé Barthelemy; but a quarter of a century elapsed, before this fundamental principle of hieroglyphic writing was determined. To George Zoega also belongs the merit of employing the term phonetic (from the Greek Porn meaning "expressive of sound;" and the conjecture, that some of the figures of animals, &c., found in the legends of Egypt, must represent sounds, and were possibly By such, and similar extremely partial results, so wearied had the learned become with speculations devoid of probability, and theoret ical systems unsupported by reason, that Egyptian studies were, by the mass, considered as unsatisfactory as astrology-the hope of ever unravelling the legends of the Nilotic Valley, was looked upon to be as illusory as the expectations of the alchemist. letters. The real progress in Egyptian studies dates from the appearance of the great French work, better known as the "Description de l'Egypte;" compiled at the expense of the French government, after the return to France of Napoleon's expedition, by the enthusi astic and laborious savans who had accompanied it. This truly great work presented, for the first time, faithful architectural copier of the monuments of Egypt to the student: and if experience has since shown that the French artists, of that day, were not scrupu lously exact in delineating the hieroglyphical legends sculptured on the edifices, of which they gave measurements and descriptions in other respects correct, still a mass of facsimiles was thus furnished to the decipherer, and an immense step was effected in general Egyptian knowledge. The museums of Europe, in the mean time, were continually re. ceiving additions of antiquarian relics from the shores of the Nile. The "Ægyptiaca" of the learned Hamilton threw, with the prece ding antiquities, a flood of light upon the "darkness" of Egypt, as known to Europeans in the first years of the 19th century: while the return of the victors at Abookeer and Alexandria, spread through. out Europe, a clearer conception of Egypt, as a country, than had previously been entertained. Again, in 1812, the learned mystagogue, Chevalier de Palin, boldly undertook the deciphering of all Egyptian hieroglyphics, and asserts to the effect, that we have only to translate the Psalms of David into Chinese, and transpose them into the ancient characters of that language, to reproduce the Egyptian papyri! that Hebrew translations of some Egyptian records are to be found in the Bible (!) | and, while the portico of the temple of Dendera contains, among various subjects, dedications of the Roman Emperors, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero (dating between the years 14 and 60 after Christ,) another theorist, Count Caylus, combining what he terms the "Symbols of Nations" in Africa, Asia, Europe, and America, applied his results to this unfortunate temple; asserting, that the hiero- Other works, like that of Denon, kept up the revived interest; glyphics thereon contain merely a "translation of the 100th Psalm until Belzoni's discoveries of entrances to divers pyramids at Memof David, composed to invite the people to enter into the temple of phis, and of the tomb celebrated by his name at Thebes (now known God." as that of "Osirei-Menephtha," B. C. 1580;) and Cailleaud's account Others have maintained, that the hieroglyphic legends, sculptured of the pyramids, &c. in Ethiopia, joined to the continued transfer to and painted on every temple of Egypt, in all the tombs of her people, European cabinets of vast collections of Egyptian Antiquities, furand on almost every article that now embellishes the museums of nished to scholars the materials whereon to prosecute their investi. Europe, are nothing more or less than Hebrew-that the pyramids gations. In 1808, the learned work of Quatremêre, Recherches, &c., were built by Moses and Aaron; while another scholar, the Abbé demonstrated, that "the Coptic tongue was identical with the Egyp Tandeau, in 1762, maintained, that hieroglyphics were mere arbi. tian" language, handed down from mouth to mouth, and graphically trary signs, only employed to serve as ornaments to the edifices on in Greek characters, with the addition of seven signs taken, as subwhich they are engraved, and that they were never invented to pic-sequently shown, from the enchorial writings. The Coptic, as ture ideas. Yet these illusions were not unproductive of some advantages. Some faint glimmers were thrown on certain points of history; and Kircher's voluminous collection of passages regarding Egypt from Greek and Roman authors, with the attention excited, through his researches into the Coptic tongue (of which language numbers of manuscripts have since been drawn from obscurity,) has led to most important results. The vast erudition of Jablonsky came in aid of the same object; and his "Pantheon Ægyptiorum" has spared many of his successors a great deal of trouble. It may, however, be maintained, that the first real step made into hieroglyphical arcana, is to be dated from 1797, when the learned Dane, George Zoega, published at Rome his folio, "De Origine et Usu Obeliscorum," explanatory of the Egyptian obelisks. It was the first time, that learning and practical common sense had been united in Egyptian researches; and likewise the first time, that an •See Calmet's Dictionary, Le. known to us, came into use with Christianity, and ceased to be orally preserved about a hundred years ago; though, as a dead language, it is still used in the Coptic Christian liturgies in Egypt. The mul titude of Greek and Latin inscriptions, existing in edifices along the Nile, with Greek, and a few bilinguar fragments and papyri, col lected in various countries, enabled the classical Greek antiquary, Mons. Letronne, to bring before the world his invaluable "Researches to aid the History of Egypt," and thus elucidate many curious points of Roman and Ptolemaic periods; while Champollion's "Egypt under the Pharaohs," in 1814, announced the appearance of another com. petitor on the stage of Egyptian archæology, whom Providence seems to have created the especial instrument for resuscitating the long lost annals of Egypt. With these laborers may be classed (although their travels took place, and their works appeared some years after) the ingenious Gau, who explored Lower Nubia, and the Baron Mi. nutoli, who visited Egypt, and the templed sanctuary of Jupiter Amon, in the Oasis of Seewah. |