Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1880-07-31
Reading HierogIvphlc..

Up to the year 1869, when the
famous Rosetta stone was discOv-
cred by the savans who had accom-
panied Napoleon's expedition 10
Egypt, hieroglyphics were almost a
sealed book even to the most learned.
Hardly anyone doubted that the
most profound secrets of the arts
and of nature were held within
them, and the most simple charac-
ters were looked upon as types OF
ideas inaccessible to common minds.
1t therefore came to pass that the
imagination was made to play the
legitimate part of reason in deci-
phering monumental inscriptions,
and hypothesis usurped the place oi
facts, as may be seen from the six
folios of Kircher. This laborious
scholar believed himself able to de-
cipher all Egyptian Inscriptions,
and, according to him, all those
which were found on obelisks,
mummies and amulets contained
the exposition of a most refined cab
alistic Science. OF course his system
was completely at fault, as may Id
seen from the fact that on the nae
dallion from the Pamphilian obe-
lislz, which contained only theword
"Emperor,n written in phonetic
characters, Kircher thought that he
had found the following phrase.
"The author Of fecundity and all
vegetation X Osiris, whose gene
rative fecundity Is derived from
heaven by the holy Mophta.v Even
as late as 1921 Kircher had his dis
eiples who improved upon his alb
Surdities,. a work being issued in
that year from the Archiepiscopal
press of Geno which purported I'd
be a new translation of the inscrip-
tions on the Pamphilian obelisk, q
monument which, according to the
new QIdipus, recorded the Triumph
gained over the infidels by the
adorers of the Holy Triuity and the
Eternal Word in the reign of an
Egyptian king who reigned six
hundred years before the deluge.
When the Rosetta stone was discov-
cred, i'm 1899, a single glanceshowed
the correctness of Bishop Warbur-
toms conjecture that hieroglyphs
form a regular written language.
The stone when complete was a
tablet of black basalt more than 3
feet and / inch high by 2 feet 5
inches wide and 10 Inches thick,
which appears to have been Origi-
nalIy set up In the temple Of Tum.
When found il was badly broken,
bat held fourteen lines Of legible
hieroglyphs, thirty-twO Of cursive
Egyptian and fifty-four lines Of
Greek. 4;s. r. .-.I.r'.
After the capitulation of the
French at Alexandria the stone was
sent to England, and was almost at
once discovered to be the long
sought key to the unriddling Of the
hieroglyphs, although it was not
till long afterwards that a complete
translation of the hierOglyphie text
was given by Brugsch Bey in 1851
and by Chabas in 1867, and even to
the present time the eursive writing
has not been entirely read. The
Greek text was early restored, in
iterpreted and corrected by Person,
Villoison and Letronne, and il was
found that the Others were not lite
raj translations of the Greek, but
paraphrases in which the original
document appears to have been
drafted. In the meantime Cham
pollion, the younger, had been study
ing the ancient monuments of
Egypt, having previously become
versed in Coptie, the ancient indig-
enous idiom, which after the con-
version of Egypt to Christianity
was written with Greek characters,
but which is now almost a dead
language. The understanding Of
this idiOm, the words and phrases
of which were represented by the
hierOglyphs, seemed to ChanlpOlliOn
anecessary preliminary to the read
ing of the latter. In 1922 he COM
municated to the French Institute
the results of his studies, and 1t was
generally acknowledged that at last
the alphabet of the hieroglyphs had
been discovered. Cbampollion de-
monstrated, first, that from the
time of the domination of the
Greeks and of the Romans in Egypt
the graphic system comprised a
number of figures purely and abso-
solutely phonetic; second, that by
LltdLi7 VI fttlt1oc S5lHlAo Va pOtNiN5 AHf
names of Greek and Roman sOver-
eigns were engraved lOn certain
Egyptian monuments, and third,
that this true hieroglyphie alphabet
was in use In most remote times.
It was found that hierOglyphies are
written from right to left or from
left to right according to the way
in which the figures of animals and
so forth range, though sometimes ON
narrow columns they are written
vertically. Partly they are pictOri-
al thus an OK is represented by the
figure of an OK. AT other times
they are phonetic and written with
an alphabet Of about one hundred
and forty letters, of which many
are synonymous, The powers OF
these letters were determined by
the names of the kings In which
they were found, but as this cannot