method recognized correctly the
meaning of several groups, and though Akerblad had even ascertained most
of the signs of the demotic alphabet, still they were both incapable of
discerning the elements of which the demotic writing is composed.

The great English physician and naturalist, Thomas Young, who also
occupied himself with the three various texts, made better progress.
Taking advantage and making use of the parts that had been revealed to
him by demotic and hieroglyphic text, he succeeded, in a mechanical way,
and by intelligent comparisons in deciphering the names Ptolemaios and
Berenike, and in recognizing even the hieroglyphic signs for numbers.
Still the true nature of the Egyptian writing was not revealed to him
either. In their particulars his ascertainments are untrue, for in the
names he had in no way discovered the alphabetic signs of which they
were composed.

As to the remainder of the inscription he thought that it consisted of
such drawn signs or forms with symbolical significance as might be found
interpreted in the "Hieroglyphica of Horapollon."

That those groups of hieroglyphics surrounded by a frame (cartouche) are
the names of kings, had been contended long before by the Dane Zoege,
Barthelemy, and others. The framed hieroglyphics on the tablet of
Rosetta could, as the Greek text taught, signify but the name of
Ptolemaios. Champollion also had originally held the same erroneous
opinion as Young and his predecessors. Though he succeeded in defining
several groups of characters of the people's writing, like Akerblad, by
comparison, he, even as late as 1821, in his essay on hieroglyphics,
entitled "De l'Ecriture hieratique des Anciens Egyptiens," declares them
to be symbolical signs and figures.

But he knew of Young's successful comparisons with Greek names; and when
Mr. Bankes brought a small obelisk to England from the island of Philae,
on which the framed group of hieroglyphics were bound to contain the
names of Ptolemaios and Cleopatra, because a Greek inscription at the
foot of the obelisk mentioned these royal names, a firm starting-point
was created by Champollion, from which he was to succeed in removing the
mass of obstacles which had stood in the way of all previous
explorations and researches.

He made his basis the supposition that the framed names were constructed
of alphabetic signs. The name Ptolemaios was known through the tablet of
Rosetta. If the second name on Bankes's o