Bunsen meanwhile was solicitous for the material welfare of his protégé, and it is not a little to be ascribed to his and Gerhard’s influence,--Boeckh too was a zealous advocate,--that the Academy of Sciences at Berlin awarded Lepsius five hundred thalers for his farther improvement in Egyptology, and that Gerhard,--although not officially,--could offer him the prospect of the same amount for a second year. Before this assistance had been promised him he had written to Bunsen: “It is easy to understand that there may be much opposition to furnishing aid for such a special object, as every one will not regard the importance of it in the same way ... but I am especially anxious because I have not yet been able to present to the Academy anything which could give me an ostensible claim to the assistance which I desire. On this account I have thought that it might be of advantage to my affairs if I should put in order and send to the Academy my treatise on numerical words and arithmetical figures. It seems to me that I have indisputably found the key to this interesting subject in the Egyptian figures and Coptic numeral words. If all this meets with your approval, I would first send this treatise to William von Humboldt, who is most interested in special investigations of this subject, and probably, also, in the method of treating it. The extremely friendly letter, and the favorable opinion (far beyond my expectations), which he sent me, when I forwarded to him my little pamphlet on Sanscrit paleography, have given me hopes of a kind reception from him.” In fact, the treatise was despatched to Berlin, but when it arrived there William von Humboldt was no longer among the living, and it was with great difficulty that Lepsius was able to recover his manuscript. The Berlin Academy awarded him the sum mentioned without it, for they knew that the recipient was worthy, and that it would produce good fruit to science. “The death of William von Humboldt,” Lepsius wrote to Bunsen on the thirtieth of April, 1835, “has greatly grieved me, as well on account of the personal kindness which he repeatedly manifested towards me, as on account of the irreparable loss which the science of language has suffered thereby. It was he especially by whom I most hoped to be understood in my philological aims, and whose verdict I had always in mind throughout this last work. You must be aware that he leaves two works in manuscript, one on the Sanscrit languages of the Indian Islands, another on languages in general.” The handsome stipend of the Berlin Academy smoothed Lepsius’ way to Italy, whither Bunsen summoned him with ever increasing urgency.