An Account of Some Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature and Egyptian Antiquities
Thomas Frederick Young
9781465530028
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The Greeks and Romans, either from national pride, or from a want of philological talent, were extremely deficient in their knowledge of all such languages as they called barbarous, and they frequently made up for their ignorance by the positiveness of their assertions, with regard to facts which were created by their own imagination. It was very currently believed, on their authority, not only that Egypt was the parent of all arts and sciences, but that the hieroglyphical inscriptions, on its public monuments, contained a summary of the most important mysteries of nature, and of the most sublime inventions of man: but that the interpretation of these characters had been so studiously concealed by the priests, from the knowledge of the vulgar, and had indeed been so imperfectly understood by themselves, that it was wholly lost and forgotten in the days of the later Roman Emperors. The story, however, of a reward, supposed to have been offered in vain by one of the first of the Caesars, for an interpretation of the inscription on an obelisc, then lately brought from Egypt to Rome, appears to rest on no authentic foundation. Among the works of more modern authors, who had employed themselves in the study of the hieroglyphics, it is difficult to say whether those were the more discouraging, which, like the productions of Father Kircher and the Chevalier Palin, professed to contain explanations of every thing, or which, like the ponderous volume of Zoëga on the Obeliscs, confessed, after collecting all that was really on record, that the sum and substance of the whole amounted absolutely to nothing. Father Kircher’s six folios contain some tolerably faithful, though inelegant, representations of the principal monuments of Egyptian art, which had before his days been brought to Europe: and, according to his interpretation, which succeeded equally well, whether he happened to begin at the beginning, or at the end, of each of the lines, they all contain some mysterious doctrines of religion or of metaphysics. With equal sagacity, but with much less appearance of laborious research, the Chevalier Palin, beginning, in one instance at least, by way of variety, in the middle, has more recently discovered, that Hebrew translations of many of the Egyptian consecrated rolls of papyrus are to be found, in the Bible, under the name of the Psalms of David. Whatever may be thought of the judgment of these antiquaries, their opinions are not particularly discreditable to their talents and ingenuity: for having once allowed themselves to set out with the mistaken notion, that it was possible to determine the sense of the hieroglyphics, by internal evidence and by the force of reasoning only, the imperfections of their superstructures were the unavoidable consequences of the unsubstantial nature of the foundations, on which they were raised. There was indeed a traditional record of the true sense of one single character, denoting LIFE, which had been handed down by the ecclesiastical writers, and had been generally received as correct by scholars and antiquaries: although I cannot help suspecting that Sir Archibald Edmonstone’s memory deceives him when he remarks, that the same symbol is often substituted, in Christian inscriptions, for the simpler sign of the cross, with which they more commonly begin. We also find some imperfect hints of a partial knowledge of the sense of the hieroglyphics in the puerile work of Horapollo, which is much more like a collection of conceits and enigmas than an explanation of a real system of serious literature: and while such scattered truths were confounded with a multitude of false assertions, it was impossible to profit by any of them, without some clue to assist us in the selection. For my own part, if I had ever read of the true signification of the handled cross, it had entirely escaped my recollection.
