HIEROGLYPHICS
236
HIEROGLYPHICS
the spaces are neatly and carefully packed, so as to leave no naked appearance of background.
" The mvention of hierogh-phs, called NeUr lliant, or ' divine words,' was attributed to the god Thoth, the Egyptian Logos, who is repeatedly called the scribe of the gods and lord of the hieroglyphs. Pliny attributes their invention to Menon. The literature of the Egyp- tians was in fact called Hermaic or Hermetic, on ac- count of its supposed divine origui, and the knowledge of hieroglji^hs was, to a certain extent, a mysterj^ to the uninitiated, although universally employed by the sac- erdotal and instructed classes. To foreign nations, the hieroglyphs always remained so, although Moses is sup- posed to have been versed in the knowledge of them (Philo, vita Moysis) ; but Joseph is described (Gen. xUi, 23) as conversing with his brethren through interpreters, and does not appear to allude to hierogh^Dhic ^ratmg. The Greeks, who had settled on the coast as early as the Gth century B.C., do not appear to have possessed more than a colloquial knowledge of the language (Diod. Sic. Ixxxi, 3, 4) ; and although Solon, B.C. 538, is said to have studied Egyptian doctrines at Sebemiytus and Heliopolis, and the doctrines of Pythagoras are said to have been derived from Egypt, these sages could only have acquired their knowledge from interpretations of hieroglyphic writings. Hecatseus (B.C. 521) and He- rodotus (B.C. 456), who visited Egypt in their travels, obtained from similar soiurces the information they have aiforded of the language or monuments of the countrj' (Herod, ii, 30). Democritus of Abdera, indeed, about the same period (B.C. 459), had described both the Ethiopian hieroglji^hs and the Babylonian cuneiform, but his work has disappeared. After the conquest of Egj-pt by Alex- ander, the Greek rulers began to pay attention to the language and history of their subjects, and Eratosthenes, the keeper of the museum at Alexandria, and INIanetho, the high-priest of Sebennytus, had drawn up accounts of the national chronology and historj' from hieroglyphic sources. Under the Roman empire, in the reign of Au- gustus, one Chaeremon, the keeper of the library at the Serapseum, had drawn up a dictionary of the hiero- glyphs ; and both Diodorus and Strabo mention them, and describe their nature. Tacitus, later imder the em- pire, gives the account of the monuments of Thebes translated by the Egjiitian priests to Germanicus ; but after his time, the knowledge of them beyond Egypt it- self was exceedingly limited, and does not reappear till the third and subsequent centuries A.D., when they are mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, who cites the translation of one of the obelisks at Eome by one Her- mapion, and by Julius Valerius, the author of the apoc- rj'phal life of Alexander, who gives that of another. Heliodorus, a novelist who floiu-ished A.D. 400, describes a hieroghqihic letter written by queen Candace (iv, 8). The first positive information on the subject is by Cle- ment of Alexandria (A.D. 211), who mentions the sym- bolical and phonetic, or, as he calls it, cyriologic nature of hieroglyphics (Strom, v). Porphyry (A.D. 804) di- vides them also into ccenologic or phonetic, and oenig- matic or symbolic. Horapollo or Horus-Apollus, who is supposed to have flourished about A.D. 500, wrote two books exiilanatory of the hieroglyphics, a rude, ill-assort- ed confusion of truth and fiction, in which are given the inter]-irctation of many hierogh-phs, and their esoteric meaning. After this -^mter, all knowledge of them dis- appeared till the revival of letters. At the beginnmg ot the 16th centurj- these sjTnbols first attracted attention, and, soon after, Kircher, a leamed Jesuit, pretended to interpret them by vague esoteric notion?, derived from his o\ra fancy, on the supposition that the hieroglyphs were ideographic, a theorj' which barred all progress, and was held in its full extent by the learned, till Zoega, at the close of the 18th centurj' {Be Orir/ine Obdiscomm. fol. Kom. 1797), first enmiciated that the duals or car- touches contained royal names, and that the hierogh-^ihs, OT some of them, were used to express sounds" (Cham- bers, Cyclo2)(Bdia).
" The knowledge of hieroglvphics which we at pres- ent possess o-\ves its origin to the Eosetta stone, Avliich is now in the British Museum. This stone was fomid by the French among the ruins of Fort St. Julien, which is situated near the mouth of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, and was given up to the English in accordance with the terms of the treaty of Alexandria. It is sup-
n
(^^ 33^
The Rosetta Stoue, with Specimens of the three Styles of Characters found upon it. 1, 1', Sacred or Hieroglyph- ic ; 2. 2', Enchorial or Demotic ; 3, 3', Greek.
posed to have been sculptured about B.C. 195, and con- tains a decree in honor of Ptolemy V (Epiphanes ) writ- ten in three different characters. One of these is Greek, and a part of it has been explained to state that the decree was ordered to be written in Sacred, Enchorial, and Greek writing. Dr. Young (A rchceologiu, 1817) was the first that attempted to decipher this inscription, in which he partially succeeded by counting the recurrence of the more marked characters in the hierogh-phics, and comparing them with those that occurred about the same number of times in the Greek. Champollion and Wilkinson have followed up Dr. Young's discoveries with great ingenuity, and we can now partially read in- scriptions which before were wholly unintelligible to us. Among other obstacles, however, this remains in the way, viz. that the Rosetta stone was sculptured about B.C. 195, and in Lower Egj-pt ; while the major part of the inscriptions were written during the twelve previous centuries, and are found in T'pper Egj-pt. Hieroglyph- ics are written either from left to right or right to left, according to the direction in which they face ; though sometimes the columns are so narrow that they may be almost said to be written fnm top to bottom. They are partly pictorial ; thus ' ox,' ' goose,' ' temple' are rep- resented by pictures or pictorial symbols of an ox, etc. At other times they are phonetic, and written by an al- phabet of about 140 letters, of which many are synony- mous ; some being adapted for writing, others for sculp- ture ; some in use at an earlier period, others at a later. The powers of these letters are determmed by the names of the kings in which they are found ; but, as this can- not be done verj- exactly, they are generally arranged mider about twelve of our primarj- letters. AVe cannot, however, distinguish accurately between the vowels, or p and PH, and other cognate letters. The names of sov- ereigns are always written within a ring or cartouche : those of any other person are distuiguished bj' a sitting