Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/23

 pronunciation of signs; for, from the day this proof was furnished, he could certify that he possessed the Egyptian alphabet. But now remained the language; for pronouncing words is nothing, if we know not what they mean. Here Champollion's genius could soar. He perceived that his alphabet, drawn from proper names and applied to words of the language, simply furnished Coptic. Now Coptic, in its turn, is a language which, without being so well explored as Greek, had for a long time been not less accessible. (It was a spoken language until the sixteenth century, and three spoken dialects remained, sufficiently resembling the old Egyptian to enable all the grammatical forms and structure to be examined.) Therefore the veil was completely removed. The Egyptian language was only Coptic written in hieroglyphs; or, to speak more correctly, Coptic is only the language of the ancient Pharaohs, written in Greek letters. The rest may be inferred. From sign to sign Champollion really proceeded from the known to the unknown, and soon the illustrious father of Egyptology could lay the foundations of this beautiful science, which has for its object the interpretation of the hieroglyphs.

Further, as remarked by Dr Birch, Egyptologists have patiently traced word after word, through several thousands of texts and inscriptions, until they have found its correct meaning. It was ascertained at length that almost every word consists of two portions—hieroglyphs to represent the sound, followed by hieroglyphs expressing its general or specific meaning. Provided with these materials the enquiry advanced. The result is that we are gradually recovering a knowledge of the history of Egypt and the religion of its people, from a time long anterior to the birth of Moses down to the latest period of the empire. The hieroglyphs reveal a rich literature, including not only the annals of the empire, but books on ethics, romances