Vol. I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

xiv Introduction.
Champollion's many years in compiling a Hieroglyphic Dictionary ; that he
manuscripts. had been assist ed by his friend, Salvador Cherubini (1760-1842) ;
that Charles Lenormant (1802-1859) had helped him in transcribing
the slips ; and that Ippolito Rosellini (1800-1843 ?) had
made a copy of this Dictionary before Champollion set out on
his last journey to Egypt. But when year after year passed and
Champollion-Figeac failed to issue any of his brother's works,
many scholars came to the conclusion that the manuscripts did
not exist.
RICHARD LEPSIUS AND SAMUEL BIRCH.
Meanwhile two young men, C. R. Lepsius (1810-1884) and
Samuel Birch (1813-1885), had turned their attention to the
study of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and succeeded in completing
Champollion's system of decipherment and establishing it.
Lepsius first studied in Berlin under Bopp (1791-1867), and
having received his doctor's degree in philosophy in 1833,
departed to Paris, where he won the Volney prize in 1834. In
Lepsms jgoe he published the two Dissertations 1 which established his
completes . .
Champollion's reputation as a comparative philologist. He went to Rome,
system of where he became an intimate friend of Ippolito Rosellini, the
decipherment. . . .
Egyptologist and friend and travelling companion of Champollion.
Here he wrote and published in the " Annali dell' Institute
Archeologico
di Roma "
(Vol. IX, 1837) his famous " Lettre a
M. le Professeur Rosellini sur 1' Alphabet Hieroglyphique." In
this letter, which created widespread interest, he succeeded in
removing many of the defects of Champollion's development of
Young's system of phonetics, and treated the whole question of
Egyptian decipherment in 'such a masterly manner that all
adverse criticism of a serious character was silenced once and
The Phonetic for all. It is unnecessary to refer here to the great works to
t^e publication of which he devoted the remaining forty-eight
years of his life, for they do not concern the question under
discussion.
Whilst Lepsius was perfecting Champollion's system, Birch
was studying the whole question of Egyptian decipherment from
an entirely different point of view, namely,
that of a Chinese
scholar. It will be remembered that so far back as 1764 Joseph
1
ZWEI SPRACHVERGI.EICHENDE ABHANDLUNGEN. /. Ueber die Anordnung
und Verwandtschaft des Semitischen, Indischen, Aethiopischen, Alt-Persischen
und All-Aegyptischen Alphabets. II. Ueber den Ursprung und die Verwandtschaft
der Zahlworter in der Indo-Germanischen, Semitischen, und der Koptischen Sprache.
Berlin, 1835-6. 8vc.