Vol. I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

He finally
adopts a
phonetic
alphabetic
arrangement
and rejects
his own
ideophonetic
system.
Birch,
Leemans and
Lepsius begin
to publish the
Egyptian
texts.
The Leyden
Papyri.
The Turin
Book of
the Dead.
XXX11 Introduction.
1842, and Birch and his great contemporary Lepsius spent some
years in digesting these works. Birch told me more than forty
years ago that the more he studied the monuments, and the more
he copied hieroglyphic and hieratic papyri, the more he became
convinced that Champollion's " natural and rational "
system
of arranging words in the Egyptian Dictionary was hopelessly
unpractical.
and ability,
He had profound respect for Champollion's learning
but he could not give his " "
suffrage to the Dictionnaire
as Champollion-Figeac hoped he would. In the end he decided
labours he
once and for all that in continuing his lexicographical
must adopt a purely phonetic, i.e., alphabetic arrangement, even
though it implied the rejection of the " ideophonetic " arrangement
which he himself had proposed in 1838. Moreover, his own
study of the Sallier and Anastasi Papyri, which the British Museum
acquired about that time, convinced him of the fact that the time
for the publication of a really useful Egyptian Dictionary had not
yet come. Material out of which a dictionary might be compiled
existed in abundance, but it was unpublished. What was most
wanted was good copies of texts on which scholars in every country
could work, and the Trustees of the British Museum rendered
Egyptology great service when they published the wonderfully
good copies of the Sallier and Anastasi Papyri, made by Mr. Nether-
clift under the superintendence of Birch. 1 Dr. Leemans urged the
Government of the Netherlands to publish the monuments and
papyri at Leyden, and they wisely did so, 2 and Lepsius put an
end to vague talk about the Book of the Dead when he published
a facsimile of the famous Turin Codex, containing the Saite
Recension of this important work. Further, the last-named
scholar, having persuaded the Prussian Government of the
importance of collecting the fast-perishing inscriptions in
Egypt, was despatched to that
the work, and so was able
Egyptologists throughout the
country in 1842 to carry out
to place at the disposal of
world his great Corpus of
The
"Denkmaler." Egyptian texts and papyri, Nubian inscriptions, etc., called the
" Denkmaler." 3
1
(i) Papyri in Hieroglyphic and Hieratic Characters, etc., in the British Museum.
London, 1844, fol. ; (2) Select Papyri in the Hieratic Character with prefatory
remarks [by S. Birch]. London, 1844, fol. A mass of valuable material was
published by Sharpe in his Egyptian Inscriptions from the British Museum and
other sources. London, 1837-41.
1 Monuments tigyptiens du Musee d'Antiquites des Pays-Bas a Leide [Parts
i and 2 contain facsimiles of Monuments and Papyri]. Leyden, 1841-2.
* Denkmaler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, 12 Bande, large folio, 1849-59.