y
found leisure in abundance to complete several unfinished works; and
when in 1818, through the influence of the Duke of Decazes, their
banishment was pronounced at an end, Francois had completed his great
work, "L'Egypte sous les Pharaons."

This work, of the utmost importance at the time, in the preparation of
which the Coptic sources were freely drawn upon, won Francois his lost
chair at the Grenoble University. After he had secured this post he was
encouraged to found a home of his own. Rose Blanc was the bride-elect,
with whom he was united in a most happy marriage until his death.

Since many years Francois had occupied himself with the monument which
gave promise to the possibility of deciphering hieroglyphics.

During the French expedition, as it happened, the talisman was found
which was to become the key to disclose the mystery of the language and
the written signs of the Ancient Egyptians--the tablet or the key of
Rosetta, a stone-plate made of black granite. Three inscriptions,
written in different signs, covered the originally rectangular surface
of the tablet. The uppermost one, considerably injured, showed the
hieroglyphics, which were familiar through the obelisks and other
Egyptian monuments; the second inscription was obscure; while the third
and lowest inscription, which had suffered but little injury, consisted
of Greek letters clear to every philologist. It proclaimed that the
tablet contained a decree of the Egyptian priesthood, in honor of the
fifth king of the house of the Ptolemies, and that this was written in
the holy language, in that of the people of Egypt, and in Greek, on the
same tablet. Here was, therefore, a somewhat extensive text in two of
the three modes of writing of the Egyptians of which Clemens of
Alexandria makes mention, with a Greek translation of the same. The
fortunes of war brought this extraordinary monument into the hands of
the English. It was placed in the British Museum, and care was taken
that copies of the three inscriptions should reach the various
Egyptologists, among them Champollion.

The demotic inscription--that is to say, the text in the writing of the
people, was one of the most inviting to decipher, because the signs
composing it seemed to be letters representing sound. This was
sedulously attempted by several scientists, and with the best results by
the great French Orientalist, De Sacy, and by the Swede, Akerblad. But
though the former by a mechanical