(_c_) The _Demotic_ or _Enchorial_ characters preserve but slight traces of their derivation from picture-writing. As the term _hieratic_ (Greek _hieratikos_, sacerdotal) denotes the class by whom that writing was used, so the terms _demotic_ (Greek _demotikos_, of the people) and _enchorial_ (Greek _enchōrios_, of the country) denote that this writing was in popular use, being adapted to the purposes of daily life. It appears to have come into use about 900 B.C., and so continued till the fourth century of our era. It has been shown that in the time of Darius and other rulers of the Achæmean dynasty, proclamations and documents of general importance were set forth in three languages--Babylonian, Medic, and Persian. So, in the time of the Ptolemies, who inherited the Egyptian possessions of Alexander the Great and ruled in the Nile Valley till it fell under the sway of Rome, all matters of public importance were made known in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek characters. The hieroglyphic was called the "writing of divine words"; the demotic, "writing of letters"; and the Greek, "writing of the Greeks." CHAPTER VII THE ROSETTA STONE The expressions given above occur on the famous Rosetta Stone, an inscribed slab of black basalt, which has proved to be of priceless value in supplying the key to the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs, thus fulfilling a purpose corresponding to that of the Behistun rock inscriptions in the interpretation of cuneiform writing. The slab--which is preserved in the British Museum--takes its name from its discovery among the ruins of a fort near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, where it was found by a French officer in 1799. On the capitulation of Alexandria to the British, the stone, whose importance had been detected by the savants attached, by the foresight of Napoleon, to his expedition, came by good fortune under the charge of Sir William Hamilton, whose interest in Egyptian antiquities was keen. It is not perfect, but enough has survived to suffice for decipherment of the general tenor of the inscriptions. Speculation as to the meaning of the hieroglyphs had been rife for centuries, for although they remained in use one hundred and fifty years after the Ptolemies began to reign (305 B.C.), and although the names of Roman emperors were written in them as late as the third century A.D., only a few among the classical writers whose works we possess have anything of value to say on the matter. It was not until the early decades of the present century that the ingenuity of two Egyptologists, Young and Champollion, working independently (as, years later, Adams and Leverrier worked at the problem of the discovery of Neptune), wrested their secret from the hieroglyphs. Honour lies only in lesser degree with some immediate predecessors, among them Zoëga, who rightly conjectured that the oblong rings enclosed royal names, because these "cartouches," as they are called, appeared above the series of sitting