Somewhat more than a year and a half ago I began the study of Egyptian antiquity by the path which had been substantially opened to modern science, and firmly trodden by her, since Champollion’s important discoveries regarding phonetic hieroglyphs. I did so with a generally diffused doubt as to the soundness of the new doctrine which had been almost exclusively founded and embraced by a French scholar. The system of Champollion was a purely empirical one, which had not yet been reduced to order. It affirmed more than it proved, and appealed to me less at the beginning, in proportion as I had become accustomed in those of my previous studies which related especially to philology, to seek organic coherence in science, and only to admit as a foundation there for reasons of intrinsic worth. I began with the _Précis hiéroglyphique_, as the most comprehensive statement of the new discovery, and found on every side assertions which seemed to me undemonstrable, and evidence which seemed to me imperfect. I reserved to myself some doubts as to the reading of the names Ptolemy and Berenice, which would need to be solved to satisfy reasonable criticism. But in the phonetic hieroglyphs the substitution of the vowels seemed to me too arbitrary, and the mixing of the phonetic with the figurative and symbolical hieroglyphs, to represent one and the same word, seemed quite inadmissable. In my earlier palaeographic researches amongst occidental and oriental writings I had always found the strictest economy and a surprising significance in the original signs for the sounds, united with an accuracy which has hitherto been far too little regarded. But here I had to accustom myself to a superfluity, I might say a prodigality, of signs, which yet only imperfectly attained their object, and therefore seemed so much the more to be chosen arbitrarily and multiplied in a chaotic manner. Nevertheless, I did not allow myself to be discouraged from proceeding further, because at the same time I saw plainly that there were many things which were incontestably correct, and I also believed that I had found a coherence in the system, and several isolated proofs of it, which had escaped the discoverer himself. Thence I began to believe that it was a question of method, and that it was only necessary to separate the certain from the uncertain in order to make clear the true condition of affairs, and the real extent of what had so far been achieved on this field. Here other workers had preceded me, some of whom sided with and some against Champollion. More especially since the French Expedition an immense literature has begun to investigate, describe, and profit by every aspect of Old and New Egypt. By making myself as thoroughly as possible acquainted with this, I endeavored to keep myself as free as possible from a one-sided apprehension and criticism of hieroglyphics, and of Egyptian learning in general, so far as it rests upon native authorities.