An account of some recent discoveries in hieroglyphical literature and Egyptian Antiquities

Young, Thomas (1773-1829). An account of some recent discoveries in hieroglyphical literature, and Egyptian antiquities. Including the author's original alphabet, as extended by Mr. Champollion, with a translation of five unpublished Greek and Egyptian manuscripts. xv, 160pp. Text illustrations. London: John Murray, 1823. 227 x 142 mm. Original boards, rebacked, corners worn. Minor foxing but very good.

First Edition. Young, best known for his role in establishing the wave theory of light, also made the crucial first steps in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, working with the trilingual inscription on the Rosetta Stone. Since the Stone's discovery in 1799, scholars had been working without much success to decipher its Egyptian demotic and hieroglyphic texts. Young turned his attention to the problem in 1814, and by 1815 had begun communicating his results, which he published in 1819 in an unsigned supplement on "Egypt" for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His main breakthroughs were spotting the relationship between the hieroglyphic and demotic inscriptions, and, most importantly, postulating that the demotic script contained both pictorial and phonetic elements. From looking at the Stone's Greek text, Young realized that the six cartouches in the hieroglyphic portion must contain the name of Egypt's Greek ruler Ptolemy; he was thus able to work out which Egyptian symbols in the cartouches had been used phonetically to spell out each letter of the king's non-Egyptian name. He also tentatively assigned phonetic values to several more hieroglyphics.

Meanwhile other scholars had been making progress with the Rosetta Stone's texts, most notably French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion. Young and Champollion initially had a collegial relationship, exchanging letters about their researches, but this turned sour after Champollion published his own alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphics without sufficiently acknowledging Young's substantial contributions to the subject. In 1823 Young published the present work, in which he for the first time "made a public claim to whatever credit may be my due" (p. ix), listed seven key discoveries he had made regarding Egyptian hieroglyphics, and described his latest investigations. Wood, Thomas Young, pp. 206-255.