Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 10.djvu/79

* HIEROGLYPHICS. which seems to liave been written about a.d. 100. It was. however, the desire to make the sacred Christian writings aciessil)le even to the un- learned that led to the origin of Coptic writing and literature. The date of the Coptic version of the bible is disputed, but it does not seem to oe older than the tbird century, fx-rhaps later. Coptic was written with 24 (.Jruelc and 7 demotic letters. On its history and its extinction as a living language at tiie end of the Middle Ages, see COITS. Interest in the lost knowledge of hieroglyphics was awakened in Eui-ope in the si.xteenth century. About Iti.'jO the learned .Jesuit Atbanasius Kir- cher endeavored to interpret them by a fanciful method of his own, finding long theological and philosophic systems in grou|)s which contained only the names of kings, etc. The few monuments with hieroglyphics which were then known were explained )iy means of Hebrew, Chaldee. Chinese, etc., rarely by means of Coptic, which was known only imperfectly in Europe before the eighteenth century. The Greek traditions on hierr>glyphics in Ilorapollo. Tsetses, etc., were not incorrect, as has now been recognized, but insuHicient. The basis for deci|)hernient was furnished by the French expedition to Eg^Tt under Napoleon. Through it a much larger number of the Egyp- tian monuments became known, above all the famous inscription of Eosetta. which yjroved the key to the decipherment. This stone, found by a French artillery otTicer in building a fort near l{o.setta in 1790. and brought to London after the capitulation of the French army (see Ro.sett. Stone), contains a decree of the Eg-ptian priests in honor of Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, writ- ten in Greek, and preceded by a translation into hieroglyrihics and demotic. Unfortunately, the hieroglyphic text was much mutilated, and for some time defied the efforts of the decipherers. The demotic part was better preserved and De Sacy, Ackerbald (1802), especially Thomas Young (1815. etc.). correctly established the sense of many groups and sentences. Dr. Yoimg came very near finding the correct value of some hieroglyphic letters (1819), but the merit of the decipherment belongs entirely to ChampoUion (q.v.l. even if he did not work quite inde- pendently of Young, as he always claimed. He took as starting-point the two names Ptolemy and Cleopatra, furnished by the Rosetta Stone and an obelisk at I'liibe. These two names yielded thirteen signs, the jihonetic value of which Cham- poUion determined correctly or approximately. He next identified the name Alexander, which fur- nished three nunc signs, and thus went on step by step, through the names of the Ptolemaic kings ami Kom.in emperors found on the monuments, and if he had not died prematurely (1SS2) he would doubtless have succeeded in reading more than sinsile sentences and in |)erfecting his sys- tem, wliirli even in his posthumous works does not do full justice to his irenius. His discoveries were continued by Rosellini. Salvolini. later by Birch. T^psius. ami De Rouee. For a long time the errors of SevfTarth and T'hlemann exercised a confusing and hindering influence. The French and Tusean expeditions under rhampollion and Rosellini. and especially the Prussian expedi- tion imder Lepsius (q.v.). furnished rich ma- terial from the monuments. Grammars of the languase of the hieroLrlypliics were pub- lished by De Roug6 {Chreslomathie (gyptienne, 63 HIEEOGLYPHICS. Paris, 1867-75) ; Birch (in Buns^en, Egypt's Flace in. the World's History, trans, vol., London, 1887) ; Brugsch, B ieroglyphische Oram- matik (Leipzig, 1872), also in French (1867). Later grammars by Lepage Renouf, Elcmentiiry Grammar of the Egyptian Language (London, 1875) ; Budge, First Utrps in Egyptian (Lon- don, 1895) ; Loret, Manuel de la langue igyp- tienne (Paris, 1889) . Lrman's book. .ley,i/p(i.<ic/i<; Grammatih, also in English (London, 1894), is very brief, but best represents the present knowl- edge. On his grammar of N'eo-Egyptian, see above; his Hprache des I'aiiyrut Westcar (Gijt- tingcn, 1889) treats of an early vernacular phase of the language. A copious dictionary is in prepa- ration under the auspices of the Berlin Academy, as Bi"ugsch"3 Hieroglyphisch-deinotisches W'lirler- buch (7 vols., Leipzig, 1867-80), although the best Egyptian dictionary at present in existence, is rapidly becoming antiquated. The dictionaries of Birch (in Bunsen V.), Pierret, ^ ucabultiire liieruglyphique (Paris. 1875) ; Levi. Vocabolerio gerogtifico copto Ebraico (Turin, 1887), are less reliable than that of Brugsch. Several journals are devoted to Egjptologj', viz.: Zeitsclirift fUr aegyptischc ^prache und AUertumskunde (Ber- lin) ; Recueil de travaux relatifs d la philo- logie et a Varcheologie egyptiennes et assyriennes (Paris); Sphinx (ITpsala); and the literature of the subject is growing immensely. The suc- cess which attended the study of hieroglyphics attracted the attention of students to this branch of Egjptologj', and demotic was for a long time neglected. In 1855 Brugscli published his (Irani- maire drmoligiie. which, though now antiquated, formed the basis for all subsequent investigations. Again neglected for a considerable time, the study of demotic was revived by Revillout, who devoted special attention to the legal documents written in demotic script {Chrestomathie demo- tigiie, Paris, 1880), but his works are to be used with great caution. In more recent times, the most meritorious publications on the subject of demotic are those of F. LI. Griffith and V. Spiegelberg. The hieratic documents were first made intelligible by the works of Ch.abas and Goodwin. The paleography of hieroglyphics has recently been treated by Griffith in several vol- umes of the Archa-ological Survey of Egjpt. (See Egyttot.ogt.) It may be remarked that the question as to whether the decipherment of Egyp- tologists rests on a better basis than the vagaries of Kircher was frequently asked as long as the fragmentary Rosetta Stone was the only bilingual (or rather trilingual) text. After the discovery of the larger and perfectly intact trilingual text, called the decree of Canopus. containing a decree of the priests in honor of Ptolemy III.. Euergetes, in the year B.C. 238 (found by L. Reinisch. issi;. near Tanis; his companion T.epsius also claimed the discovery), such doubts became impossible. Since that time various bilinguals have been found, and other sources which control the de- cipherment are now available. Tlie exact pro- nunciation of the vowels, which were never per- fectly expressed in Egyptian writing, and changed frequently in course of time, is much disputed, and will possibly never be settled with alisolute certainty in all points. The texts, however, are now. generally sneaking, at least as well under- stood as any Pliivnicinn inscription or as the Hebrew text of the Bible. The time when they will be understncid as well as Greek or Latia