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the Greek inscription, so as to render it easily intelligible. The difficulty still remained of identifying the hieroglyphic and enchorial with the Greek, so as to ascertain not only the language, but also the words and grammatical structure of these inscriptions. Sylvestre de Sacy, assuming that the language was the Coptic, or some kindred dialect of the Egyptian, made some progress on the right method of discovery, and pointed out the three groups which contain the proper names of Ptolemy, Bernice, and Alexander. The Swedish philologist Akerblad advanced further, and showed that these groups are capable of being decomposed into letters, and even attempted the construction of an alphabet.

Up till this time attention had been directed almost exclusively to the enchorial or popular inscription, but Dr THOMAS YOUNG, a learned physician of Cambridge, previously distinguished by his discoveries in mathematical and physical science, having directed his acute mind to the subject, obtained the key to the solution of that mystery which had perplexed the world for two thousand years. The method which he adopted was, like every true method or principle, very simple. Directing his attention chiefly to the hieroglyphic inscription, he subdivided it into paragraphs, by comparing its recurring groups of characters with the words or sentences repeated in the Greek inscription. By this means it was possible, not only to distinguish the groups of characters which represented certain words, especially proper names, but also to mark by what hieroglyphic figure each letter in these names was represented, so as to ascertain the sound for which it stood, or its phonetic value, and thereby to obtain a true hieroglyphical phonetic alphabet. This result, however, was not actually reached by Dr Young. By fixing his attention too exclusively on groups, and not directing it sufficiently to individual characters, he failed to discover the existence of a purely phonetic alphabet, though he regarded it as furnishing "a certain kind of syllabic sys

tem.

The more complete interpretation of the hieroglyphical inscriptions fell to the lot of Champollion. Directed and encouraged by Young's attempt to analyse the royal names contained in the two rings, or cartouches, as they have been called, which Young had published in 1819, Champollion adopted and followed the same method, and aided by the use of other royal names, and by a considerable knowledge of the Coptic language, he produced, in the course of a few years, the most incontrovertible proof that the key to the interpretation of the hieroglyphical inscriptions had been found, A further discovery of what are called homophones, or different figures representing identical sounds, led to a greatly increased

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knowledge of the system. The labours of Rossellini and others tended greatly to promote the investigation, and to keep alive the interest felt in it, as well as to stimulate others to enter on so fertile a field. Of these, the most recent, ardent, and successful is Lepsius, to whom belongs the honour of an additional discovery, by which the knowledge of hieroglyphical inscriptions may be in time completely ascertained. Champollion had obtained an alphabet of about 200 signs, forming evidently a system far too cumbrous for use as an alphabet. Lepsius perceived, that by far the greater part of them were not purely phonetic, that is, were not capable of universal application, but used only in certain words, or for peculiar combinations of sounds. Rejecting all such, the remainder amounted to no more than 34 purely alphabetic signs, which he identified with the 15 old Egyptian letters, containing only the simple and primitive consonantal sounds. By this means the hieroglyphic alphabet was corrected, illustrated, and reduced to something approaching to scientific precision and simplicity.

As our present design is merely to point out with what measure of certainty we may regard the method pursued in the interpretation of those ancient records, not what credit is due to the records themselves, or to the inferences which have been drawn from them, to which we may have to refer subsequently, we turn at present from Egypt to direct our attention to Assyria. It had been long known, that throughout those regions of Central Asia, generally designated as Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and Persia, there existed numerous sculptured inscriptions on rocks, stones, and bricks, in a peculiar character, termed the arrow-headed, or wedge-shaped, or cuneiform, or cuneatic,-a form which recent discoveries must have rendered familiar to all our readers. But the meaning of these inscriptions was utterly unknown. For a time it seemed a very hopeless task to attempt to decipher the unknown alphabet of an unknown language, and even profound scholars gazed on these inscriptions with despair. At length Professor Grotefend began the career of discovery, by deciphering the names of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Hystaspes, in an analysis of two short inscriptions at Persepolis, copied by Niebuhr the traveller. To the alphabetic elements thus obtained, some additional elements were added by M. Burnouf, from two cuneiform inscriptions at Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana. Professor Lassen took up and prosecuted the investigation with great ability and perseverance, both adding new characters and explaining a considerable number, the meaning and value of which had been mistaken by his predecessors.

In the year 1835, there appeared on the field a new explorer in the person of a young English officer, stationed for a time. at Kermanshah, on the western frontier of Persia, of scholarlike acquirements and active habits, able to wield either the sword or the pen with equal dexterity. MAJOR (now COLONEL) RAWLINSON, finding himself in a position where his irrepressible energy was not engrossed by the active duties of the soldier, devoted himself to the pursuits of the antiquarian and scholar. He had heard that Professor Grotefend had deciphered some of the names of the early Persian monarchs of the Achæmenidæ, but in his solitary position he could neither obtain a copy of the Professor's alphabet, nor ascertain what inscriptions had been examined in framing it. This disadvantage only stimulated his enterprising spirit. He copied the sculptured tablets of Hamadan with his own hand, and set himself to the task of analysing them without aid from any quarter. He soon ascertained that these tablets consisted of two trilingual inscriptions, and found that the characters coincided throughout, except in certain groups, which he concluded must represent proper names, so arranged as to suggest that they indicated a genealogical succession. To these he applied the names of Hystaspes, Darius, and Xerxes, conjecturally at first, which afterwards proved to be the true identifications. Having obtained a portion of the great Behistun inscription, he continued to prosecute his labour with such success as to construct an alphabet of eighteen characters, the correctness of which subsequent investigations have only tended to confirm. In the year 1837 he copied the entire Behistun inscription, so far as it remains undefaced; and in the year 1846 a complete translation of that great inscription was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, with a memoir on the Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions. It may be necessary to advert to the ground and method of discovering the language of these inscriptions, as well as the alphabet; and it will be easily seen that the course of inquiry would be directed to ascertain what had been the language of ancient Persia, a close approximation to which might be expected to be found in the Zend. This expectation was, in a very considerable degree, realised with some assistance from the Vedic Sanscrit. The remarkable result has been, that Colonel Rawlinson has been enabled to analyse nearly every word of the cuneiform inscriptions hitherto copied in Persia, and to verify the alphabetic power of almost every cuneiform character.

The inscriptions which Colonel Rawlinson so successfully deciphered, and indeed all the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, are, in almost every instance, both trilingual and triliteral; that is, they are engraved in three different languages, and

each language has its peculiar alphabet. These he terms the Babylonian, Median, and Persian. The Babylonian is regarded as the most ancient; the Median might be termed Scythian, on account of its peculiarities; and the Persian displays a close affinity with the language of the Zend; or rather, the Zend appears to be a modernised dialect, or offspring of the ancient Persian. The Persian is thus the medium of the deciphering process with regard to the cuneiform inscriptions as the Coptic was with regard to the hieroglyphics of Egypt. The tablets of Persepolis, of Nakhsh-i-Rustam, of Hamadan, and of Behistun, have in the first place furnished a list of more than eighty proper names, of which the true pronunciation is fixed by their Persian orthography, and of which we have also the Babylonian equivalents. A careful comparison of these duplicate forms of writing the same name, and a due appreciation of the phonetic distinctions peculiar to the two languages, supplied the means of determining with more or less of certainty the value of about one hundred Babylonian characters, and thus a very extensive basis has been laid for a complete arrangement of the alphabet. The Babylonian and the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions, it may be remarked, are not quite identical in all respects, but approximate so closely that the interpretation of the one secures the interpretation of the other. When, therefore, we follow Colonel Rawlinson's account of his discovery of the key to the cuneiform inscriptions at Behistun, and adopt the word Babylonian as the designation of one class of the trilingual inscriptions, we must remember that that term is equally applicable to the Assyrian. The names of Persian kings, countries, and cities furnished the key to both the alphabet and language of the Persian compartment of the inscription. The Persian, by collation, furnished the means of interpreting both the Babylonian and the Median; and the Babylonian was afterwards found to be almost directly identical with the Assyrian, when its buried inscriptions were discovered. There is, however, so much difference between the Median and the Assyrian, in consequence of the strongly Scythic type of the former, that but for the intermediate position of the Persian, the other two could scarcely have been interpreted, the one giving little or no aid to the interpretation of the other. Of these three forms of cuneiform inscription, the Assyrian appears to be the most ancient, as a mode of writing; but its language is not, therefore, necessarily the most ancient. It is certainly Semitic in its basis or primary elements, as a language; but the mode of writing is not Semitic, being written from left to right, in which, and in several other respects, it bears traces of having been influenced by either a Hamite or a

Japhetian power, or both,-by either an Egyptian or an Indian element, or by both. We must not allow ourselves to be further drawn into this tempting field of philological investigation; yet, before quiting the topic, we may suggest, that this blending of influences is precisely what might have been expected among the three primary branches of mankind, in that distant age when they had scarcely ceased to form one people, dwelling in one common country, and holding constant mutual intercourse.

We trust our readers will now perceive that no small reliance may be placed on the conclusions which have been drawn from the interpretation of the inscriptions of ancient Egypt and Assyria, which are not merely conjectural, but have been obtained by a purely scientific mode of investigation. That mode may be thus distinctly stated:- When an unknown inscription, expressed in various languages, and with various alphabetic characters, or even symbols or ideographs, is subjected to the interpretative process, the first point is to ascertain the number of the signs which are employed; the next point is to distinguish recurring groups of signs, for the purpose of being compared and identified, as expressing the same thing; the third point is, assuming them to be the embodiment of some language, to explain them by the language they are supposed to embody, according to the assumed or ascertained sense of the inscription. In this point alone is there any hazard of error; but in this very point will be found also the test by which any error may be detected. In the case of the Rosetta stone, the sense of the inscription was easily ascertained by means of its Greek compartment. The recurring groups of signs, especially those of names contained in rings, supplied the elements of an alphabet. But the phonetic value of these elements could not be ascertained without the aid of some language, the alphabetic sounds of which they might be found to represent. The Coptic was the native language of the Egyptians, descended, as might fairly be assumed, from the language of ancient Egypt. The hieroglyphs represented things; what were the names of those things in Coptic, and what sound did those names chiefly embody? That was ascertained, and the initial, and of course most marked sound of the Coptic name of the sign, was taken as the alphabetic value, or sound-power of that sign; and thus an alphabet was formed. The only assumption here was, that the Coptic was in the main identical with the ancient Egyptian language. Had this assumption been erroneous, it would of necessity have failed to give a word corresponding to the meaning of the Greek inscription; but when it proved to be identical with it, the demonstration was complete, that the true key to the

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