Excerpt from The Language of the Ancient Egyptians and Its Monumental Records

In the annals of philological research we seek in vain for a study that can lay juster claim to a first position, for any that has made more rapid and important progress in a short time than that of the Ancient Egyptian language. It was reserved to our century to solve the mystery of a language that had for more than one thousand years baffled the ingenuity and most searching inquiry of great men and scholars. Fifty years ago still witnessed the first beginnings of a science struggling for existence amid a chaos of opinions, while leaning for support on an unpretending black stone bearing a trilingual inscription. Yet this weak support was destined afterwards to become the very foundation of this study, and the discovery of this stone at Rosetta in 1799 inaugurated a new era in archaeological re search and scientific investigation. Many years of labor passed before the correct alphabet was determined and then, with the help of Italian scholars, the Coptic was resuscitated from the darkness that was' gathering around it, being then at the brink of utter decay. The Egyptian words were then carefully com pared with the Coptic, and at last the meaning of words deter mined irrespective of the Greek translation of the Rosetta Stone, whose version was nevertheless fully corroborated. To one man above all belongs the honor of having watched over the early stages of the study with a jealous and loving eye, the illustrious founder of the science of Egyptology, Francois Champollion (17 91 At the time of his death the study had made a most remarkable progress and found worthy suc cessors to build up the mighty structure we have now. To another man, Richard lepsius (1810 one of the greatest scholars and profoundest thinkers of this century, we owe the critical examination of Champollion's system and the gradual consummation of the work in its present form. His incessant labors have given to the study of Egyptian its prominent posi tion in philology, in literature, in history, in the arts and exact seiences. Through him the knowledge gained of ancient Egypt has been treasured up in the books of scholars, has elicited the unbounded praise of all nations, has increased our knowledge of history, has furnished weapons against the ad verse criticism of the Bible, and has insured to the study of Egyptian a permanent place in the leading universities of the world. He lived to see the time that the Stone of Tanis (other wise called the Decree of Canopus), discovered by himself, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt the truth of his teach ings and of his whole system of interpretation. Since then every voice of Opposition has been silenced. As can readily be inferred, he has not done all this work by himself, but had a host of willing laborers, whose names form around him a halo of surpassing lustre. Suffice it to recall such names as Brugsch, Ebers, Duemichen, men before whom science bows in homage, or such as Birch (england), Pleyte (holland), Rouge, Chabas and Maspero (france). A host of admirers of Egyptology is pressing on in the wake of these scholars, and adds fame to the laurels already gained by them. Progress is the watch word of Egyptology, nor need we be surprised at this, as we must bear in mind that thousands of monuments still remain buried away under the sand of the desert and the soil of the N ile-valley and that each addition to the discovered inscriptions helps to fill up some little gap that appears in various parts of this young study.

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