sent to be, men cannot refrain from inquiring into beginnings, it is a most propitious omen, that Providence has so guided their inquiries, by means of unexpected discoveries, as to bring them into contact with the ancient records of the sacred Scriptures, thereby infusing into the very mind and heart of this transition age the confirmed principles of Divine truth, from which we may cherish the hope, that the result of all the mighty movements of the troubled and tossing present, will be the development of an unprecedented measure of truth, purity, freedom, and peace in the coming future.

The discoveries to which we allude are those connected with ancient Egypt and ancient Assyria, two countries with which the historical narratives of the Bible bring us into close contact, at a period of antiquity beyond the range of common history. The books of Moses, while relating the various events which befel the race of Abraham, record also somewhat of the rise of great nations in Central Asia, and state with considerable minuteness the transactions which occurred in Egypt, both during the residence of the Hebrew people in that country, and especially at the period of their departure. Again, both in the historical books of Kings, and in the writings of the prophets, there are placed before us narratives respecting the relation in which the Hebrew people stood to the mighty Assyrian empire, and the treatment they received from that cruel and oppressive power. There were consequently two historical epochs, separated from each other by a period of five or six centuries, in each of which the Hebrews had been in close contact with a great monarchy in such a manner that the transactions which had taken place must have been recorded in the public annals of these monarchies. It might be expected, therefore, that these annals, if they were still extant and could be recovered, would either confirm or invalidate the Scripture narrative, at least in its historical department. But if such annals were still in existence, they were buried in impenetrable obscurity, out of which no amount of past learning or research had been able to raise them. In Egypt the traveller wandered amidst a vast wilderness of pyramids, tombs, obelisks, and sphinxes, covered with hieroglyphical inscriptions, which might be charged with all the wisdom and learning of that ancient kingdom, but the deep mysteries of which no man had been able to disclose. Vast mounds cumbered the banks of the Tigris, to which tradition ascribed some connection with that great city Nineveh, the haughty metropolis of imperial Assyria; but no human eye had explored the secret recesses of those huge funereal mounds. So long as this remained the case, there could be nothing obtained from those silent retreats of the buried past, either to confirm or to invalidate the Bible;

and yet men continued to hover round and gaze upon them with increasing earnestness. There had been hopes entertained by some infidel writers, such as Volney and his followers, that these "ruins of empires" contained, and would one day reveal, a complete confutation of Scripture history; this position carried, they would have a strong "vantage ground" from which to assail its doctrinal statements. With this view such men were eager to explore the unknown records of Egypt; while a measure of anxiety as to the result equally impelled the defenders of Bible truth to prosecute a similar course of investigation. It was not mere antiquarian curiosity that urged on the prolonged inquiries with such zeal and perseverance, but the deep, though often unacknowledged, feeling that the veracity of revelation was involved in the results. It is one thing to please the eye and cultivate the taste by inspecting the shape of an Etruscan vase, or the exquisite proportions of Athenian sculpture; and quite another to stand face to face with an ancient Pharaoh, and obtain from his monumental records a sentence regarding the veracity of Moses.

At length the sphinx yielded up the solution of her riddle; Isis was unveiled, and the monuments of Egypt revealed their mysteries. The result has been, to state it in the language of one of the most thoroughly learned of Egyptologers, that the discoveries made in ancient Egypt contain much to confirin various statements in the Mosaic writings, but nothing to contradict them. More recently, Nineveh has been disinterred. The gigantic tomb-heaps of her buried palaces have been explored by extensive excavations and tunnels, and vast quantities of sculptured historical records have been recovered, collected, and deciphered. There, too, the result has been the same. The Bible narrative has been confirmed with marvellous exactness, not only in its leading statements, but often also in very minute details. It is scarce a metaphor to say, that from dead Egypt and buried Assyria sepulchral forms have arisen and voices have been heard, bearing solemn testimony to the truth of that record which pronounced their doom, rendering awful homage to the Almighty arm by which they were smitten in their pride.

But the question may be asked, What certainty is there that the ancient records of Egypt and Assyria have been at length correctly deciphered, and are now truly understood? This question deserves the most conclusive answer that can be given; and our attempt to furnish such an answer will lead us to give a brief account of the method employed in deciphering those ancient inscriptions, an outline of the historical information obtained, and a short statement of its relation to well-ascertained secular history, as

well as to the historical narratives of the Bible. By following this process, we venture to hope that we may be able to place before our readers a tolerably full and intelligible view of those intensely interesting and precious memorials of the past, to which the attention of the civilised world is now so eagerly and so justly directed.

During the progress of that tremendous struggle begun by the French Revolution, which ushered in the present age of transition, Egypt was invaded by an army under the command of Napoleon. That wonderful man had taken with him not only soldiers to fight, but men of science and literature to explore, so that his campaign should produce results of every kind. In August 1799, while a French officer of artillery was engaged in constructing fortifications at Rosetta, he dug up the fragment of an oblong square slab of black syenitic basalt, covered with inscriptions. This discovery was immediately communicated to the men of science and literature, to whose province it belonged to ascertain its value. The inscription was threefold: the upper of the three was in hieroglyphics, the middle in what was termed the enchorial or popular, and the lowest in Greek. A hasty perusal of the Greek text showed that this stone tablet recorded the ascription of the highest honours of the Pharaohs to Ptolemy Epiphanes by the priesthood of Memphis. It was at once perceived that such a record might be of great value in guiding the inquiries of learned men with regard to the interpretation of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Shortly afterwards Alexandria fell into the hands of the British; and the Rosetta stone, which had been packed up for transmission to Paris, was sent to England, and deposited in the British Museum. The possible value of that relic of antiquity was very readily recognised by the literary men of Britain; and with a liberality which did them honour, engraved copies of it were immediately made, and transmitted to every seat of learning in Europe, for the investigation of philologists every where.

The path of inquiry had most fortunately been cleared from the obstructions of the mythic and symbolical dreams of earlier interpreters, about the same time, by the learning and sagacity of Zoega, a native of Denmark, who had established the distinction between hieroglyphics and purely symbolical representations, had maintained that the former contained signs of articulate sounds, and had given to these the name of phonetic signs. It was an obvious conjecture that the triple inscription was but one in meaning, but expressed in different languages and modes of writing, so as to be equally intelligible to the different races or classes of people by whom they were used. The labours of Heyne and Porson speedily restored and interpreted

the Greek inscription, so as to render it easily intelligible. The difficulty still remained of identifying the hieroglyphic and enchorial with the Greek, so as to ascertain not only the language, but also the words and grammatical structure of these inscriptions. Sylvestre de Sacy, assuming that the language was the Coptic, or some kindred dialect of the Egyptian, made some progress on the right method of discovery, and pointed out the three groups which contain the proper names of Ptolemy, Bernice, and Alexander. The Swedish philologist Akerblad advanced further, and showed that these groups are capable of being decomposed into letters, and even attempted the construction of an alphabet.

Up till this time attention had been directed almost exclusively to the enchorial or popular inscription, but Dr THOMAS YOUNG, a learned physician of Cambridge, previously distinguished by his discoveries in mathematical and physical science, having directed his acute mind to the subject, obtained the key to the solution of that mystery which had perplexed the world for two thousand years. The method which he adopted was, like every true method or principle, very simple. Directing his attention chiefly to the hieroglyphic inscription, he subdivided it into paragraphs, by comparing its recurring groups of characters with the words or sentences repeated in the Greek inscription. By this means it was possible, not only to distinguish the groups of characters which represented certain words, especially proper names, but also to mark by what hieroglyphic figure each letter in these names was represented, so as to ascertain the sound for which it stood, or its phonetic value, and thereby to obtain a true hieroglyphical phonetic alphabet. This result, however, was not actually reached by Dr Young. By fixing his attention too exclusively on groups, and not directing it sufficiently to individual characters, he failed to discover the existence of a purely phonetic alphabet, though he regarded it as furnishing "a certain kind of syllabic sys

tem."

The more complete interpretation of the hieroglyphical inscriptions fell to the lot of Champollion. Directed and encouraged by Young's attempt to analyse the royal names contained in the two rings, or cartouches, as they have been called, which Young had published in 1819, Champollion adopted and followed the same method, and aided by the use of other royal names, and by a considerable knowledge of the Coptic language, he produced, in the course of a few years, the most incontrovertible proof that the key to the interpretation of the hieroglyphical inscriptions had been found, A further discovery of what are called homophones, or different figures representing identical sounds, led to a greatly increased

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knowledge of the system. The labours of Rossellini and others tended greatly to promote the investigation, and to keep alive the interest felt in it, as well as to stimulate others to enter on so fertile a field. Of these, the most recent, ardent, and successful is Lepsius, to whom belongs the honour of an additional discovery, by which the knowledge of hieroglyphical inscriptions may be in time completely ascertained. Champollion had obtained an alphabet of about 200 signs, forming evidently a system far too cumbrous for use as an alphabet. Lepsius perceived, that by far the greater part of them were not purely phonetic, that is, were not capable of universal application, but used only in certain words, or for peculiar combinations of sounds. Rejecting all such, the remainder amounted to no more than 34 purely alphabetic signs, which he identified with the 15 old Egyptian letters, containing only the simple and primitive consonantal sounds. By this means the hieroglyphic alphabet was corrected, illustrated, and reduced to something approaching to scientific precision and simplicity.

As our present design is merely to point out with what measure of certainty we may regard the method pursued in the interpretation of those ancient records, not what credit is due to the records themselves, or to the inferences which have been drawn from them, to which we may have to refer subsequently, we turn at present from Egypt to direct our attention to Assyria. It had been long known, that throughout those regions of Central Asia, generally designated as Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and Persia, there existed numerous sculptured inscriptions on rocks, stones, and bricks, in a peculiar character, termed the arrow-headed, or wedge-shaped, or cuneiform, or cuneatic,-a form which recent discoveries must have rendered familiar to all our readers. But the meaning of these inscriptions was utterly unknown. For a time it seemed a very hopeless task to attempt to decipher the unknown alphabet of an unknown language, and even profound scholars gazed on these inscriptions with despair. At length Professor Grotefend began the career of discovery, by deciphering the names of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Hystaspes, in an analysis of two short inscriptions at Persepolis, copied by Niebuhr the traveller. To the alphabetic elements thus obtained, some additional elements were added by M. Burnouf, from two cuneiform inscriptions at Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana. Professor Lassen took up and prosecuted the investigation with great ability and perseverance, both adding new characters and explaining a considerable number, the meaning and value of which had been mistaken by his predecessors.