DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.3720#0210
ATTEMPTS OF DE SACT AND AKEKBLAD. 193
to commence with. The French savans had made drawings,
and disseminated a knowledge of its existence, and with France
the first attempt at decipherment began. The demotic, or
enchorial characters, a very cursive form of writing, appeared
the most promising, especially as the idea prevailed that it was
alphabetic in its nature. This idea, as all hitherto entertained
on the nature of the inscriptions, was erroneous. Silvestre de
Sacy, one of that illustrious Oriental school which France
produced in the last half century, essayed this portion of the
inscriptions, and pointed out, in the demotic, some of the
proper names mentioned in the Greek version. In 1802.'
Akerblad,2 a Swedish archaeologist, who united classical and
Oriental attainments, advancing a step further, had assigned
the value of the characters employed to transcribe the proper
names.
Here the French researches dropped; no one attempted the
hieroglyphical inscription. Some notions, vague and expressed
in general terms, that the hieroglyphs might be phonetic, had,
as already stated, been set forth by Zoega and De G-uignes;
but they were mere conjectures.
The mode of deciphering the demotic was as follows:—
First, it was perceived that the words Alexander and Alex-
andria, in the fourth and seventeenth lines of the Greek
inscriptions corresponded with two other groups in the second
and tenth line of the demotic inscription. A group of
characters which occurred in almost every line was supposed to
be the -word " and." A group of characters, repeated twenty-
nine or thirty times in the enchorial inscription, could only
correspond to the word " king" in the Greek, which, with its
1 Lettre au Citoyen Chaptal, 8vo, 1S02.
- Lettre sur l'lnscription figyptienne du Monument de Kosette, Svo,
Paris, 1802.
to commence with. The French savans had made drawings,
and disseminated a knowledge of its existence, and with France
the first attempt at decipherment began. The demotic, or
enchorial characters, a very cursive form of writing, appeared
the most promising, especially as the idea prevailed that it was
alphabetic in its nature. This idea, as all hitherto entertained
on the nature of the inscriptions, was erroneous. Silvestre de
Sacy, one of that illustrious Oriental school which France
produced in the last half century, essayed this portion of the
inscriptions, and pointed out, in the demotic, some of the
proper names mentioned in the Greek version. In 1802.'
Akerblad,2 a Swedish archaeologist, who united classical and
Oriental attainments, advancing a step further, had assigned
the value of the characters employed to transcribe the proper
names.
Here the French researches dropped; no one attempted the
hieroglyphical inscription. Some notions, vague and expressed
in general terms, that the hieroglyphs might be phonetic, had,
as already stated, been set forth by Zoega and De G-uignes;
but they were mere conjectures.
The mode of deciphering the demotic was as follows:—
First, it was perceived that the words Alexander and Alex-
andria, in the fourth and seventeenth lines of the Greek
inscriptions corresponded with two other groups in the second
and tenth line of the demotic inscription. A group of
characters which occurred in almost every line was supposed to
be the -word " and." A group of characters, repeated twenty-
nine or thirty times in the enchorial inscription, could only
correspond to the word " king" in the Greek, which, with its
1 Lettre au Citoyen Chaptal, 8vo, 1S02.
- Lettre sur l'lnscription figyptienne du Monument de Kosette, Svo,
Paris, 1802.