e stone, which runs: "Captured in Egypt by
the British Army, 1801." No Frenchman could read those words without a
sinking of the heart.

The value of the Rosetta Stone depended on the fact that it gave
promise, even when originally inspected, of furnishing a key to the
centuries-old mystery of the hieroglyphics. For two thousand years the
secret of these strange markings had been forgotten. Nowhere in the
world--quite as little in Egypt as elsewhere--had any man the slightest
clue to their meaning; there were even those who doubted whether these
droll picturings really had any specific meaning, questioning whether
they were not merely vague symbols of esoteric religious import and
nothing more. And it was the Rosetta Stone that gave the answer to these
doubters, and restored to the world a lost language and a forgotten
literature.

The trustees of the British Museum recognised that the problem of the
Rosetta Stone was one on which the scientists of the world might
well exhaust their ingenuity, and they promptly published a carefully
lithographed copy of the entire inscription, so that foreign scholarship
had equal opportunity with British to try to solve the riddle. How
difficult a riddle it was, even with this key in hand, is illustrated by
the fact that, though scholars of all nations brought their ingenuity
to bear upon it, nothing more was accomplished for a dozen years than
to give authority to three or four guesses regarding the nature of the
upper inscriptions, which, as it afterwards proved, were quite incorrect
and altogether misleading. This in itself is sufficient to show that
ordinary scholarship might have studied the Rosetta Stone till the end
of time without getting far on the track of its secrets. The key was
there, but to apply it required the inspired insight--that is to say,
the shrewd guessing power--of genius.

The man who undertook the task had perhaps the keenest scientific
imagination and the most versatile profundity of knowledge of his
generation--one is tempted to say, of any generation. For he was none
other than the extraordinary Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of the
vibratory nature of light.

Young had his attention called to the Rosetta Stone by accident, and
his usual rapacity for knowledge at once led him to speculate as to the
possible aid this tri-lingual inscription might give in the solution of
Egyptian problems. Resolving at once to attempt the solution himself, he
set to