In the remaining cartouches of the Pharoahs, fifteen in all, we find something defective or redundant, which, as we have shewn in the above instances, requires an unwarrantable license to be exercised in supplying or omitting, in order that the name guessed out may seem to tally with the characters. An honest critic must read as it is written: he has no right to make additions or retrenchments. We think that M. Champollion has decidedly failed in his interpretation of the prenoms,' not one of which is satisfactory.

We are far from thinking that this failure is attributable to any thing erroneous in the Author's system of phonetic hie→ roglyphics. The opinion that hieroglyphics were but letters, had been maintained by many writers before M. Champollion. His own countryman Loys le Roy says: The Egyptians in ⚫ holy things did use the figures of beasts for letters, which they called hieroglyphics;' and Pliny, speaking of an inscription on an obelisk, uses the following expressions: Etenim sculptura illa effigiesque quas videmus Egyptia sunt litera. His system is undoubtedly the true one; and his failures arise from his attempting to explain more than the state of his knowledge warrants him to do,-his culpably blinking difficulties, and passing over characters which he does not know, as if they were known. He that smothers up a difficulty, is not less an enemy of science than he that ridicules a truth; for difficulties ought, like the sick of old, to be exhibited in the market-place, that every head might contribute its aid towards their solution—το τεχνιον πασα γαῖα τρεφεια Difficulties are the raw material out of which the new truths of science are to be manufactured,-the ore that must be assayed before it will yield its grains of precious metal.

From the Egyptian, M. Champollion proceeds to the Persian epoch, of which the only name that he has hitherto discovered, is Xerxes, which he reads KHSCHEARSCHA. It is accompanied with a groupe which he reads Irina, that is, Iranian, or Persian.' The inscription occurs on an alabaster vase belonging to the King of France, on which the same name is also inscribed in Persepolitan or cuneiform characters. To these succeed the hieroglyphic names of the Greek and Roman sovereigns of Egypt, the greater part of which were previously noticed in the Author's "Letter to M. Dacier." Zoego, in his learned and excellent work " De Origine et Usu Obeliscorum," calculated 950 distinct hieroglyphic signs. M. Champollion has counted 864.

* Book xxxvi, c. 8.

Of these, 100

consist of furniture and works of art; 120 of the human form in different positions; 150 of utensils and instruments of dif ferent kinds; 20 figures and geometric forms; and 50 fantastic forms. His alphabet is composed of 134 pure hieroglyphics answering to twenty-five articulate sounds, which, according to Plutarch, were the number of letters in the ancient Egyptian alphabet-we presume he means after the adoption of the Greek alphabet. We have 118 linear or outlined hieroglyphics, 88 hieratic, and 76 demotic characters; besides which M. C. presents the reader a general table of hieroglyphic signs and groupes, thirty-eight of which are alphabetic forms, such as affixes, prefixes, prepositions, articles, pronouns, verbs, (which, he says, have only three tenses, the present, the past, and the future,) &c. Twenty-eight are phonetic names of the deities. Seventeen are figurative names, that is, actual figures or representations of seventeen deities; among whom we are rather surprised not to find Mendes or Pan, summum et antiquissimum Ægyptiorum numen. Twenty-four are symbolic names of deities, several of which are so complicated, that we are disposed to regard them as phonetic, and as thrown into this class merely from ignorance of their alphabetic value. M. Champollion seems grievously alarmed lest all mysticism should be excluded from the subject, and he still clings to the symbolic interpretation, in spite of his own system. The work of Horapollo Niliacus is as much a book of emblems as that of Heinsius Alciatus, Junius, Lombucus, Schoonhovius, or any other such author, and can avail him no more in expounding phonetic hierogly phics, than they would assist in explaining the alphabets of their own language. It is, moreover, unfortunate, that not one of his symbolic names corresponds to those mentioned by Horapollo. M. Champollion has given altogether a list of 450 hieroglyphics which he has explained. We would earnestly recommend him to separate such as are doubtful from such as are fully ascertained, and to print them in distinct lists, to gether with a list of those the meaning of which he has not ascertained.

In taking leave, for the present, of this most indefatigable and intelligent Author, we thank him very sincerely for the entertainment and instruction which his work has afforded us. We have spoken freely, as became us, of what we consider as the error into which he has been betrayed by losing sight of his own principles, and by a nervous impatience of difficulties: But, in hieroglyphic learning, M. Champollion has no competitor. He is the Mahommed Ali of Egyptian literature. He promises a work on the chronology of Egyptian monu

In the mean

ments, which we shall look for with impatience. time, we beg leave, in conclusion, to present to our readers an extract on that subject from the work before us.

The monuments raised by the piety and power of the Pharaohs, or the kings of the Egyptian race, are the following, known for the most part under the modern names of the towns or villages near which they are situated: The ruins of San (the ancient Tanis), the obelisk of Heliopolis, the palace of Abydos or El Arabah, a small temple at Dendera, Karnac, Looksor, Medamoud, Kourna, the Memnonium, the palace called the Tomb of Osymandias, the superb excavations of Beban el Melouk, the greater part of the hypogea which pierce in every direction the Lybian mountain in the latitude of Thebes, the temples of Elephantina, and a very small portion of the edifices of Philoe in Egypt. In Nubia, the monuments of the earliest style and of the same date as those just mentioned, are the temples of Ghirshé, Wady Essebouah, one of the edifices of Kalabshe, the two magnificent excavations and the colossi of Ibsamboul, the temples of Amada, of Derry, of Moharraka; lastly, that of Soleb, towards the frontiers of Ethiopia.

The only well-known monuments of the Greek and Roman epoch, are, in Egypt, the temple of Bahbeit, the Kasr-Keroun, the portico of Kau-el-Keber, the great temple and typhonium of Dendera, the portico of Esneh, the temple to the north of Esneh, the temple and typhonium of Edfou, the temples of Ombos, as well as the larger edifices of Philoe; lastly, in Nubia, the temples of Kalabshe, Dendour, and Dakke.

I am unable to fix the eras of some other known edifices of Egypt and Nubia, not having yet obtained drawings of the royal legends which those buildings bear; such as the temples of Hermontis, El Kab, Taoud, Syene, Aschmounain, Fazoun, and the Oases.'

pp. 387, 8.

The classification of these monuments is an important step towards the elucidation of Egyptian history, and will assist more particularly in determining the much controverted question, whether Egypt derived its worship and literature from the African Ethiopia, or whether they were of Asiatic origin, and, ascending the Nile, extended into Nubia. M. Champollion is decidedly in favour of their African origin.

The monuments of Nubia are,' he says, in fact, covered with hieroglyphics perfectly similar, both in their form and arrangement, to those inscribed on the edifices of Thebes. We find there, the same elements, the same formula, the same words, the same language; and the names of the kings by whom the most ancient were erected, are those of the princes who constructed the most ancient parts of the palace of Karnac at Thebes. The ruins of the beautiful edifice of Soleb, situated on the Nile, nearly two hundred leagues further south than Philoe, the extreme frontier of Egypt, are the most remote known to exist, which bear the royal legend of an Egyp VOL. XXII. N.S. 2 E

tian king. Thus, as early as the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty of the Pharoahs, that is to say, nearly 3400 years before the present era, Nubia was inhabited by a people speaking the same language, employing the same writing, holding the same faith, and subjected to the same kings, as the Egyptians.

But, from Soleb to about the fifteenth degree of North latitude, proceeding southward and ascending the Nile, in ancient Ethiopia, and over an area of more than two hundred leagues, are scattered a multitude of other great monuments, which belong to nearly the same general system of architecture as the temples of Nubia and Egypt. They are equally adorned with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and contain representations of gods, which bear in the sacred writing the same names and the same legends as the divinities sculptured on the temples of Egypt and Nubia. The same analogy exists in the titles and the forms of the royal legends; but the proper names of the kings inscribed on the edifices of Ethiopia, in phonetic hieroglyphics, that have come to my knowledge, have absolutely nothing in common with the proper names of the Egyptian kings mentioned in the long chronological series of Manetho. Nor do any of them occur either on the monuments of Nubia or on those of Egypt. From this fact, established by an examination of the numerous drawings of Ethiopian monuments brought home by our enterprising traveller M. Callaud, it follows that there was a time in which the civilised part of Ethiopia, the peninsula of Meroe, and the banks of the Nile between Meroe and Dongola, were inhabited by a people possessing a language, a written character, a religion, and arts similar to those of Egypt, who were independent of the Egyptian kings of Thebes and of Memphis.' pp. 391-3.

T

This is a highly interesting fact; and the testimony of the classical authors is in favour of the opinion, that the superstitions and literature of Egypt migrated from Ethiopia northward. There is nothing, however, in this opinion, which militates against the primary Asiatic origin of the great African family. It is altogether a gratuitous supposition, that Lower Egypt, great part of which is probably made land, originally a vast marsh uninhabitable, was first peopled. It is more natural to suppose, that the first settlers proceeded from the Arabian peninsula, where its southern extremity approaches nearest the eastern coast. The origin of the Pyramids is a distinct question. The absence of inscriptions renders it difficult to fix with precision either their date or the country of the architects; but this very circumstance, as Dr. Richardson has remarked, strengthens the opinion that they are the monuments of an exotic faith and a foreign conquest. Hieroglyphics were an unknown language to the Asiatic invaders. They were doubtless the invention of the Egyptian Hermes whoever he was, and their high antiquity is unquestionable. The knowledge of hieroglyphics, the only species of writing

then known, formed, there can be little question, part of that wisdom of the Egyptians"* into whicn Moses was initiated; and if we exclude the idea of Divine Revelation in accounting for the origin of Alphabetic writing, we may suppose that the Jewish legislator so far improved upon the Egyptian art, as to form from idiographic signs the first Hebrew alphabet. Jacob Bryant's opinion, that there was no (alphabetic) writing antecedent to the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, would, on either hypothesis, seem to be by no means unreasonable. Here,' he says, the Divine art was promulgated, of which other nations partook; the Tyrians and Sidonians first, as ⚫ they were the nearest to the fountain head.'+ What he remarks of the Chaldeans and Babylonians, may, with great propriety, be applied to the Egyptians. They are greatly celebrated for their wisdom and learning; and they were undoubtedly a most wonderful people, and had certainly all the learning that could arise from hieroglyphical representations. They had, I make no doubt, the knowledge of lines, by which geometrical problems must be illustrated; and they had the use of figures for numeration; but they were without letters for ages....... For if they had been so fortunate ás to have had for so long a time these elements, they were too ingenious a people not to have used them to better purpose. ...... They were ingenious and wise above the rest of the sons of men, but had no pretensions to literature properly so called. For I cannot help forming a judgement of the learning of a people, from the materials with which it is expedited and carried on. And I should think that literature must have been scanty, or none at all, where the means above mentioned' (stones, slabs, bricks, and tiles) were applied to. For it is impossible for people to receive any great benefit from letters, where they are obliged to go to a shard or an oyster-shell for information, and where knowledge is consigned to a pantile.'

Art. IV. A concise Exposition of the Apocalypse, so far as the Prophecies are fulfilled; several of which are interpreted in a different -Way from that adopted by other Commentators. By J. R. Parks, M. D. 8vo. pp. 94. Price 5s. London. 1823.

THE Author of this book has shewn his judgement to advantage at least in two respects; he has restricted his in

Acts vii. 22.

+Analysis of Antient Mythology. vol. iv.p. 158. ‡ Ibid. pp. 160, 1.