Monuments of Egypt Author:FRANCIS L. HAWKS General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1850 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II. Rosetta Stone. -- Specimens ot the inscriptions. -- Dr. Young's discoveries. -- De Sacy. -- Akerblad. -- Champollion le Jeune. -- Discovery of homophones. -- Sir Gardner Wilkinson's tribute to Champollion. -- Exposure of the ignorance of the French savans, by Champollion. It was in August, 1799, that Bouchard, a French ofjicer of Artillery, in digging at Rosetta for the foundations of a redoubt, found a large stone of black syenite basalt, marked with various characters. Upon closer inspection, it was seen that the stone bore three inscriptions: the upper one was in hieroglyphics, the lowest in Greek letters, while that between was in a difjerent character, which it was subsequently found, on reading the Greek text, was therein called enchorial or popular. The stone finally found its way to the British Museum, where it now is. Owing to the fracture of the stone, no one of the inscriptions was entire, but still, much the larger part of each was remaining. On its arrival in Europe, its importance as a probable key to interpretation, was at once seen; and the Antiquarian Society caused the inscriptions to be engraved, and generally circulated among the European literati. The French general, Duqua, had also caused a cast of two impressions of the stone to be made at Cairo, and had taken them to Paris. And here one cannot but be struck by the reflection with which Bunseu accompanies his statement of the discovery of this interesting memorial. "This seemingly insignificant stone," says he, " shares with the great and splendid work, 'La Description de 1'Egypte,' the honor of being the only resul...« less