On the return journey he was not able to stop for as long a time as he had desired in the well-preserved Ptolemaic temples of Denderah and Edfu. These are thickly covered with inscriptions, and therefore he left behind him at those places, for Dümichen, Mariette, Naville, Brugsch and other Egyptologists, not only rich gleanings, but really the greater part of the substantial work still to be accomplished. But his attention was especially attracted in Edfu by an inscription which was afterwards to be of great service to him. In it were recorded the possessions in landed property of this temple during the reign of Ptolemy XI. (Alexander I.)[55] The surface measures which occurred in it he was afterwards able to use to advantage in his studies on the linear and square measures of the ancient Egyptians. After the expedition had passed the first cataract and entered the Nubian dominion the leader not only turned his attention to the remains of the temples there, which had as yet been examined in a very insufficient manner, but he also, with indefatigable industry, devoted himself to studying the languages of all the tribes on whose territories he touched. The description which he gives of the Nubian language, in a letter from Korusko, dated the thirtieth of November, 1843, presents with extreme conciseness the essential characteristics of this remarkable idiom. In his farther travels towards the south he afterwards investigated all the dialects of this same group of languages, and acquired such an excellent knowledge of it that he could venture, at a later date, to publish a translation of the Gospel according to St. Mark in Nubian.[56] In publishing this translation he made use of the standard alphabet which he had himself invented and which has been previously mentioned. Indeed it was on this account that he first began the difficult task of preparing the universal alphabet, which he was afterwards asked to extend to a great number of languages for various special purposes. During the journey he prepared a grammar and dictionary of three dialects; the Nuba language spoken by the Nuba or Berber tribe, the Kungara language of the negroes of Dar-Fur, and the Béga language of the Bischarin inhabiting the eastern Sudan. This he did so perfectly that he himself hoped that the publication of these works would at least afford a clear idea of the languages mentioned. After his return home he continued to pursue these studies unremittingly, and thus obtained that profound insight into all the idioms of the African continent, which gives its great and permanent importance to his last long work, the Nubian Grammar, to which we shall again refer. Lepsius at first devoted himself with special ardor to the study of those languages which in his own day still flourished on the domain of the ancient Ethiopians, because he cherished a firm hope of finding in them the key, by which to decipher the popular writing of the Ethiopians, many