The extensive use of Phœnician and Greek alphabets in Egypt and throughout the Orient, for some centuries before the Christian era, had affected the Egyptian script as a social and commercial medium. The hieroglyphics, however, held their own with the priesthood, for sacred and secular uses, until the time of the Emperor Trajanus Decius, 249-252, A. D., which is the latest period in which we find them employed for monumental purposes. A little over a century later,—with the spread of Christianity, the decline of paganism, the destruction of the Egyptian temples and the dispersion of the priesthood under the Emperor Theodosius,—the interpretation of the hieroglyphics was gradually lost, not again to be read and understood until the discovery and interpretation of the Rosetta Stone. In 1822 Champollion announced the results of his studies to the “Academy of Inscriptions” of Paris, and followed this by the publication of his work on the “Hieroglyphic System of the Ancient Egyptians,” in which he discussed the proofs that the phonetic alphabet was used in the royal legends of all ages and is the key to the whole hieroglyphic system. It will be remembered that those who before Champollion had undertaken the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, had based their efforts on the theory that these signs were mainly ideographic. With this as a working theory, all advance was impossible. Champollion, on the contrary, finding the Egyptian system including a phonetic structure, made this a basis for research, achieving a brilliant success. He never fully recognized the composite character of these phonetic signs. From these he constructed an alphabet of nearly two hundred signs, to which his pupil, Salvolini, added one hundred more, thus producing an alphabet of nearly three hundred characters. As Lepsius was to show a little later, while these signs are all phonetic, only a small number—thirty-four in all—are alphabetic, the remainder representing syllables. It is impossible, in this brief survey, to refer to the special advancements made by other distinguished scholars in this field of research. Since the death of Champollion the work of decipherment has progressed steadily on until the life, the literature and the language of the old Egyptians are open pages which all may read. There are, however, many things not yet fully understood. Of the Rosetta Stone, two of the texts may now be said to be fully translated; namely, the Greek and the hieroglyphic. This has not been possible until recently, in consequence of the mutilated condition of the tablet, a considerable portion of the hieroglyphic text and part of the demotic, being included in the fragment broken off and lost. Not long ago, however, another stele was found at En Nobeira, near Dammamour, containing a duplicate copy of the Rosetta texts in perfect condition. This is now in the museum at Boulak.