An account of some recent discoveries in hieroglyphical literature, and Egyptian antiquities : $b including the author's original alphabet, as extended by Mr. Champollion, with a translation of five unpublished Greek and Egyptian manuscriptsYoung, Thomas
History
An account of some recent discoveries in hieroglyphical literature, and Egyptian antiquities : $b including the author's original alphabet, as extended by Mr. Champollion, with a translation of five unpublished Greek and Egyptian manuscripts
Young, Thomas
Egyptian language -- Writing, Hieroglyphic
In the evening of the day that Mr. Grey had brought me his manuscripts,
I proceeded impatiently to examine that which was in Greek only: and I
could scarcely believe that I was awake, and in my sober senses, when
I observed, among the names of the witnesses, ANTIMACHUS ANTIGENIS:
and, a few lines further back, PORTIS APOLLONII; although the last word
could not have been very easily deciphered, without the assistance of
the conjecture, which immediately occurred to me, that this manuscript
might perhaps be a translation of the enchorial manuscript of Casati:
I found that its beginning was, “A copy of an Egyptian writing ...;”
and I proceeded to ascertain, that there were the same number of names,
intervening between the Greek, and the Egyptian signatures, that I had
identified, and that the same number followed the last of them; and
the whole number of witnesses appeared to be sixteen in each. The last
paragraph in the Greek began with the words, “Copy of the Registry;”
for such must be the signification of the word ΠΤΩΜΑΤΟΣ, employed in
this papyrus, though it does not appear to occur any where else in a
similar signification. I could not, therefore, but conclude, that a
most extraordinary chance had brought into my possession a document
which was not very likely, in the first place, ever to have existed,
still less to have been preserved uninjured, for my information,
through a period of near two thousand years: but that this very
extraordinary translation should have been brought safely to Europe,
to England, and to me, at the very moment when it was most of all
desirable to me to possess it, as the illustration of an original which
I was then studying, but without any other reasonable hope of being
able fully to comprehend it; this combination would, in other times,
have been considered as affording ample evidence of my having become an
Egyptian sorcerer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account