tradition has been broken for centuries; and the accounts which the old writers give of the Egyptian system of writing are not more consistent than their lists of successive or contemporary dynasties. The modern Coptic first made its appearance in the third century of our era. Its alphabet is almost wholly Greek; the relics of its literature almost entirely liturgical. Yet, however much we may doubt its applicability to hieroglyphical interpretation, the affinity of the Coptic with the old language of Egypt does not therefore fall to the ground. The modern Italian is sprung not from the old Latin, but from the dialects which formed the speech of the people while Latin was the literary language of Rome. It seems, at the least, equally probable that the modern Coptic may stand in a somewhat similar relation to the old sacerdotal language. That affinity might perhaps have been at once determined, if the old writing had been easily legible. But here lay the great mystery. The system was clearly a highly complicated one: how complicated, it was impossible to judge. To apply the analogy of cipher-writing was useless; because a cipher is a contrivance for disguising 'the alphabetical writing of a known language by a conventional change of characters.'* There remained no hope but in the discovery of some record with its translation affixed; and this was supplied by the celebrated Rosetta Stone, and by the identification of the proper names which occur in it. The name of one of the Ptolemies was found also in an inscription on the small obelisk of Phila; and the ring containing it was found to correspond with the one previously deciphered by Young. The occurrence of the name Cleopatra in the latter inscription supplied further the signs for l, o, p, a, tt; and a more extended examination revealed the fact that, both in the hieroglyphic, hieratic and euchorial writing, symbolical and alphabetical characters were intermingled, and that there were homophone signs, or different figures representing one and the same sound.‡ This latter hypothesis was rendered necessary by the fact that the language had only fifteen sounds, while the sounds discovered amounted to 200. A pure alphabet of such a kind would told, that he went so far as to deny the existence of an alphabetic element in either the hieroglyphic or hieratic character; and his latest inquiries led him in many points still farther from the truth.' (Egypt's Place, vol. i. p. 319, &c.) Sir G. Lewis remarks that the sudden illumination of Champollion in interpreting these monuments wears a suspicious appearance; and it is clear that his method has not been found altogether sufficient by his successors. Astronomy, p. 379. † Egypt's Place, vol. i. p. 327. be, as Baron Bunsen admits, not easy to comprehend; and the further discovery was made, that by far the greater part of the characters in Champollion's alphabet were not purely phonetic, i. e. not capable of universal application. The existence of the remaining thirty-four signs (on an average two for each sound), was explained by the necessity of employing sometimes a hori'zontal, sometimes a perpendicular sign, sometimes a long, 'sometimes a broad figure, in order to give an artistic shape ' and finish to each group of words." * With this apparatus and with these assumptions, Champollion and his disciples proceeded to reconstruct the old language of the Egyptian priests. The venture was perilous, yet it would be rash to deny that the proper names have been rightly deciphered, or to assert that the more modern Coptic can furnish no analogy or guidance in the process of interpretation. A review of Baron Bunsen's Egyptian dictionary will show that these analogies are frequently wanting, and sometimes very far-fetched. But the greatest trial of our faith comes in the meanings attached to the five or six hundred words which make up the Egyptian lexicon. Several hundreds or thousands more have, it is said, been now discovered; but if their meanings are equally varied, it is not easy to see what purpose they can answer, except to render more perplexing a task already next to impossible. Not only may different signs stand for the same sounds; but the same sounds may signify a dozen things which have not the slightest apparent connexion with each other, while the same thing, to heighten the wonder, may have several names. It is true that there are 164 determinatives; but, inasmuch as a club' is determinative of names of foreigners,' 'to create,' and 'wicked,' and an 'eye' of 'to adorn,' 'to see,' 'to raise up,' to suspend,' 'to consent,' 'to conceive,' to 'imagine,' &c., the limitation would yet appear to leave a large margin for conjecture. Still any help must be welcome to the students of a language in which the word ama may mean 'a 'lark,'' to be flogged," sunbeams,' and 'to place,' while the word ha may have any of the following meanings, a cow,' to begin,' to go before,' a husband,' 'a duck,' ' a substance,' ' O hail,' ' a 'day,' 'to set up,' 'to set up,'' duration,' an elegant kind of boat,' 'field clay,' 'to rejoice,' joy,'' the head,' 'a limb,'' self,' also.' It is surprising that in this labyrinth, to which that of Maris or Dedalus would be simplicity itself, recent Egyptologists are inclined to reject the slender aid which may be furnished by the analogy of Coptic, and to believe that it was used by Champollion rather as a justification to the world of the truth of his 6 6 * Egypt's Place, vol. i. p. 333. Yet 'statements than as the means of his interpretations.'* perhaps not much is lost by casting aside a reed which may pierce the hand that leans on it.† But if the system of the Egyptologists be the true one, then over the hieroglyphic writing rests the same mystery which makes the political history of the country a bewildering enigma. We start with the fact (which Sir Cornewall Lewis rightly terms utterly incredible), that this writing was not confined to the priests, but common to all educated classes, and that this system of so much intricacy, consisting of ideographic, syllabic, pho'netic, and determinative symbols, with a large class of homo'phones, or alternative signs for the same sound, should have ' remained in common use by a whole nation for twenty-two 'centuries without alteration.' And then, knowing that for hundreds of years the country was accessible to Greeks and Romans, we are startled by finding not only that they did not believe those inscriptions to contain history, or, believing it, made not the least effort to preserve it, but that the accounts left to us of the Egyptian system of writing differ altogether from the explanation given by modern Egyptologists. The latter represent it as a system which, in its several forms, exhibits a combination of ideographic and alphabetical signs, the former having a phonetic power not less than the latter. The accounts of Chæremon, Horapollo, and Ammianus Marcellinus describe it as ideographic, and not alphabetical, and exclude the idea of phonetic power. Clement of Alexandria speaks of three characters, the epistolographic, the hieratic, and hieroglyphic. This last he divides into phonetic and symbolical; the latter again into tropical, allegorical, and enigmatical; implying, it would seem, that all were kept distinct. As it stands, the text of Clement does not suit Bunsen's theory in all respects; but a slight freedom of interpretation brings it into harmony. 'Clemens might have expressed himself better and more clearly; 'but it is sufficient to establish any sense for words which ' otherwise can have none at all.' § Finally, on the supposition that the hieroglyphics have been rightly deciphered and the language at once rightly restored and rightly interpreted, comes the fatal conclusion that no * Astronomy, p. 390. † Sir Cornewall Lewis has selected some good examples from the many which show how impossible it is in all cases to determine the etymology of a word from a knowledge of its meaning. Many more may be found scattered throughout Professor Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language. Astronomy, p. 393. § Egypt's Place, vol. i. p. 341. greater certainty has been attained by aid of these monumental records than had been reached without them. Inscriptions have been found in which courtiers flatter kings and kings glorify themselves; lists of dynasties with names of rulers, some with a scanty notice, many more with none. Buildings have been examined, and the titles of those who raised them deciphered on their walls. Here and there have been found some astronomical records, but with nothing on which to raise up a chronology. All the researches of Egyptologists have failed to discover an era. There is nothing to surprise us in this failure. No trace of such an era is found in Herodotus or Thucydides, and they who do not adopt Baron Bunsen's estimate of Egyptian intellect, will not expect to find one among the subjects of Cheops or Sesostris. The disappointment was keenly felt; and M. Bunsen mourns over lost books of Manetho, lost chronicles of the priests, lost historical songs, the existence of which he assumes, just as Niebuhr mourned over the lost epie of regal Rome, and the lost annals of the Pontiffs. Like Niebuhr, M. Bunsen struggles hard to invest with a historical character books which were either legendary or liturgical. The volumes carried by the Chanter, the Horoscopos and the Hierogrammateus are exalted to a dignity which they merit far less than the mythical chronicles of Hecatæus and Hellanicus. With a less pardonable license he assumes the existence of a key, lost to us, which might have unlocked the mysteries of the lists preserved by the Egyptian priests, and which was actually used for that purpose. For lack of this he is thrown back on what the profane might term speculation, but what in Egyptology is a happy power of divination; and the right understanding of the lists is made to depend on a special faculty which answers to the converted state in the theology of the Puritan. But some misgiving still lurks in his mind. Although the national records were in the sacred guardianship of the priests, and although the predominant passion of the Egyptians was to preserve the history of their country in uncorrupted integrity, he admits that they exaggerated the dates of their history (i. 6.), that their chronology was not free from artificial elements (i. 68.), and that the priests were not altogether guiltless of imposture (i. 102.). He allows that the inscriptions on public buildings were not intended to convey any historical information (vol. iii. p. 101.), and that by adopting a delusive pivot as the basis of his researches, Champollion was led astray in his dates to the extent of several centuries.' (i. 222.) It is needless to cite further confessions that the ground on which he treads is not altogether sound, and that none can hope to follow him who are not prepared to readjust dynastic lists, to take a king from the place assigned to him by Herodotus and transfer him to that which is given to him by Manetho, or to put him in one which is allotted to him by neither, or to cut him into two or three kings whose lifetime was separated by hundreds or thousands of years. It may well excite indignation in those who do not choose wilfully to blind themselves, when they are invited to accept M. Bunsen's solution of the contradictions in Herodotus and later writers. We are told that the priests really had historical records. We are told that this hieroglyphical writing was intelligible to all educated men; and then we find that these priests were in the habit of giving to foreigners different accounts at different times. It is impossible to insist too strongly on the fact that Herodotus and Diodorus rest their narrative on the authority of the Egyptian priests. Manetho himself enjoyed, it is said, a high position among the priestly caste; and the favour with which Baron Bunsen regards Eratosthenes is perhaps a sufficient proof that the source of his information was a good one.. Yet after all his efforts, the attempt to reconcile these several statements is a complete and hopeless failure. In Herodotus Sesostris comes next after Moris, 1046 B.C. In Manetho he is the third king of the twelfth dynasty, 3404 B.C. In Diodorus he is separated from Mæris by seven generations, and appears under the name of Sesoosis; but the notices appended agree precisely with those of Herodotus. Egyptology makes short work of all. 'Bunsen first takes a portion of him, and identifies it with Tosorthrus (written Sesorthus by Eusebius), the second king of the third dynasty, whose date is 5119 B. C., being a difference in the dates of 1799 years-about the same interval as between Augustus Cæsar and Napoleon. He then takes another portion, and identifies it with Sesonchosis, a king of the twelfth dynasty; a third portion of Sesostris is finally assigned to himself. It seems that these fragments make up the entire Sesostris, who in his plural unity belongs to the Ancient Empire; but it is added that the Greeks confounded him with Ramesses or Ramses of the New Empire, a king of the nineteenth dynasty, whose date is 1255 B. C.; who again was confounded with his father Sethos, which name again was transmuted into Sethosis and Sesosis.' (Astronomy, p. 369.) Sir Cornewall Lewis is perhaps too rigid in his remarks on changes of Egyptian proper names. The language was doubtless hard to pronounce. Diabaes may be the same name as Miebaes, Mempsis as Semempsis, Sesostris as Sesorcheres ; but the transpositions and transformations to which Bunsen resorts whenever they are needed are a mere juggle. Bunsen raised Sesostris to the third dynasty; Lepsius brings him down |