GEN. C. G.; KHEDIVE; MAD MULLAH; MOHAMMEDANISM; NAPOLEON; SUDAN; SUEZ CAnal; TEWFIK; WADY-HALFA. Bibliography. Annuaire Statistique de l'Egypte (Cairo Annual); Arminjon, P., Situation économique et financière de l'Egypte' (Paris 1911); Artin, Y. P., 'England in the Soudan' (London 1911); Balls, W. L., 'Egypt of the Egyptians) (London 1915); Bréhier, L., 'L'Egypte de 1789 à 1900' (Paris 1901); Colvin, A., The Making of Modern Egypt' (London 1906); Cromer (Earl), Modern Egypt (London 1908), 'Abbas II (London 1915); Weigall, A. E. P., History of Egypt from 1763 to 1914) (London 1915). SAMUEL AUGUSTUS BINION, Author of 'Ancient Egypt or Mizraim'; Revised by Editorial Staff of the Americana. EGYPTIAN ARCHEOLOGY AND EXPLORATION. The attention of the world was drawn to Egypt as a rich field for scientific exploration in the early part of the 19th century. M. Boussard, a French officer under Bonaparte (1799), discovered at Fort Julien, near Rosetta, a large block of black granite, with the remains of three inscriptions, the first in hieroglyphs, the second in demotic characters, the third in Greek. This Rosetta Stone was taken to England after the capitulation of Alexandria (1801), and presented by George III to the British Museum. It contains a decree promulgated at Memphis, in honor of Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, by the priesthood of Egypt in synod assembled, thanking that sovereign for the benefits which he had conferred on them. They ordered it to be sent to all the temples of the first, second and third rank, there to be engraved on stelæ in the three forms of writing then used throughout the land. When found, half of the hieroglyphic portion of the Rosetta copy was wanting, but the demotic and Greek were nearly complete, and the work of decipherment began with them. The French orientalist Silvestre de Sacy made out in the demotic some of the proper names mentioned in the Greek ('Lettre au Citoyen Chaptal sur l'inscription égyptienne du monument du Rosette' Paris 1802); and the Swede Akerblad, following in his steps, assigned phonetic values to most of the signs employed in the proper names ('Lettre sur l'inscription égyptienne de Rosette adressée au Citoyen S. de Sacy,' Paris 1802). In 1814 Thomas Young, the English mathematician, succeeded in isolating a number of groups which express common names, and even in translating some fragments of demotic phrases. Turning to the hieroglyphs he tried to determine the power of the characters, which being enclosed in cartouches or rings, were known to indicate the names of kings. Thus he read the names of Ptolemy and Berenice, but he failed to analyze them exactly; five only of the values which he proposed for the signs turned out to be true. The problem with which Young had such poor success was solved four years later by Jean François Champollion, who had felt attracted to the study of the Oriental languages from his early youth and published at 24 the famous work L'Egypte sous les Pharaons) (2 vols., Paris 1814), on the civilization and history of Egypt. Guided by his thorough knowledge of the Coptic, he applied himself to the decipherment of the inscriptions, and ascertained very soon that the three kinds of characters found on the monuments, far from representing three independent systems, were three successive developments of one system of writing, of which the hieroglyphs were the prototype, the hieratic and demotic the cursive forms. ('De l'écriture hieratique des anciens Egyptiens,' Grenoble 1821). He then dissected the cartouches which had been studied by Young and proved that the hieroglyphs in them were always taken alphabetically, and that the alphabet thus employed for the rendering of the Greek royal names was the same that had been used from the time of the first dynasties, not only for proper names, but for the common parts of the language. He gave a general outline of his system to the Académie des Inscriptions on 22 Sept. 1822, a day famous as marking the foundation of Egyptology. Then he completed his revelations, and explained fully his method in his 'Précis du système hieroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens (Paris 1824; 1828). He spent the last eight years of his life in working out the principles which he had established for the resurrection of the old Egyptian world. In 1828-30 he searched Egypt from Alexandria to Wady-Halfa with the help of other French and Italian archæologists. Upon his return he was made professor of Egyptian literature at the Collège de France. He died 4 March 1832, having overtaxed his strength during the journey to Egypt. His rapid success had raised up a host of detractors and opponents. Klaproth criticized his work with a bad faith and virulence which even death did not abate; Spohn and Seyffarth started a rival system, which was rejected in Europe by 1855, but continued to find some degree of acceptance in the United States until about 1880. The general public, however, had received his labors with delight and after his death men of every nation took up his teachings and advanced the work he had so well begun. Nestor Lhôte, Charles Lenormant and Dulaurier in France; Salvolini, Rosellini, Ungarelli, in Italy; Seemans in the Netherlands; Wilkinson, Birch and Osborn in England. Champollion-Figeac devoted himself to the memory of his younger brother and published the most important of his unfinished books, his Lettres écrites d'Egypte (Paris 1833); and his 'Grammaire Egyptienne (ib. 1836-41); his Dictionnaire Egyptien en écriture hieroglyphique' ib. 1841-46); Monuments de l'Egypte et de la Nubie' (ib., 1835-75), completed by Maspero. Since then the story has been a perpetual record of success and discoveries. Lepsius analyzed critically in his 'Lettre à M. Rosellini sur l'alphabet hiéroglyphique' (Rome 1837) the structure of the old language, and elucidated the origin and mechanism of the syllabic characters, the existence of which had only been surmised by Champollion. Lepsius, however, early left philological for historical and archæological researches. From 1837 to 1885 nearly every year was marked by the appearance of some important work from his pen: Das Todtenbuch der Ägypter'; (Über die XII ägyptische Königsdynastie'; 'Einleitung in die Chronologie; Uber den ersten ägyptischen Götterkreis'; 'Königsbuch der alten Ägypter,' etc. Large portions of these have become anti |