Egyptian problems.
Having an amazing faculty for the acquisition of languages, he, in one
short year, had mastered Coptic, after having assured himself that it
was the nearest existing approach to the ancient Egyptian language, and
had even made a tentative attempt at the translation of the Egyptian
scroll. This was the very beginning of our knowledge of the meaning of
hieroglyphics.

The specific discoveries that Dr. Young made were: 1, That some of the
pictures of the hieroglyphics stand for the names of the objects
delineated; 2, that other pictures are at times only symbolic; 3, that
plural numbers are represented by repetition; 4, that numerals are
represented by dashes; 5, that hieroglyphics may read either from the
right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the
animals and human figures face; 6, that a graven oval ring surrounds
proper names, making a cartouche; 7, that the cartouches of the Rosetta
Stone stand for the name of Ptolemy alone; 8, that the presence of a
female figure after such cartouches always denotes the female sex; 9,
that within the cartouches the hieroglyphic symbols have an actual
phonetic value, either alphabetic or syllabic; and 10, that several
dissimilar characters may have the same phonetic value.

K A L A RE SA W SA RE M HA HER RE M T

[Illustration:

=_Kaharesapusaremkaherremt_=.

AN EGYPTIAN PROPER NAME SPELLED OUT IN FULL BY MEANS OF ALPHABETICAL AND
SYLLABIC SIGNS.]

Dr. Young was certainly on the right track, and very near the complete
discovery; unfortunately he failed to take the next step, which was to
learn that the use of an alphabet was not confined to proper names. This
grand secret Young missed; his French successor, Champollion, ferreted
it out from the foundation he had laid. The "Enigma of the Sphinx" was
practically solved, and the secrets held by the monuments of Egypt for
so many centuries were disclosed to the world. Champollion proved that
the Egyptians had developed an alphabet--neglecting the vowels, as did
also the early Semitic alphabet--centuries before the Phoenicians were
heard of in history. Some of these pictures are purely alphabetical in
character, some are otherwise symbolic. Some characters represent
syllables, others again stand as representatives of sounds, and once
again, as representatives of things; hence the difficulties and
complications it presented.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Events