Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/34

 His Successors.

For a good many years after this, Egyptian archaeology was chiefly cultivated by dilettanti, whose knowledge of the language seldom extended beyond the decipherment of royal names. Whole systems of Egyptian chronology have been devised by men incapable of reading and understanding a single line of Egyptian. Till 1850, the only genuine scholars who can be mentioned in addition to Lepsius, are Mr. Birch and Dr. Hincks in this country, M. Emmanuel de Rougé in France, and Dr. Brugsch (then a very young man) in Germany. But every one of these was a scholar of more than average ability, and has left his mark for ever upon the science. The important discoveries of M. Mariette belong to the next period, as also do the first works of M. Chabas and Mr. Goodwin, two scholars whose translations of some of the most difficult texts in the language caused the study of it to advance with gigantic strides. Since 1860, and particularly since the foundation in 1863 at Berlin of a journal in which everything connected with the language or archaeology of ancient Egypt might be discussed, the number of highly distinguished scholars has greatly increased. A very valuable journal of the same kind was founded in Paris in the year 1872. The names of Dümichen, Lauth, Ebers, Stern, Eisenlohr, Wiedeman, Bergman and Reinisch in Germany and Austria, Pleyte