foreign" and did not inquire into the origin of these queer figures which

covered the walls of the temples and the walls of the palaces and endless reams

of flat sheets made out of the papyrus reed. The last of the Egyptian priests

who had understood the holy art of making such pictures had died several years

before. Egypt deprived of its independence had become a store-house filled with

important historical documents which no one could decipher and which were of no

earthly use to either man or beast.

 

Seventeen centuries went by and Egypt remained a land of mystery. But in the

year 1798 a French general by the name of Bonaparte happened to visit eastern

Africa to prepare for an attack upon the British Indian Colonies. He did not get

beyond the Nile, and his campaign was a failure. But, quite accidentally, the

famous French expedition solved the problem of the ancient Egyptian

picture-language.

 

One day a young French officer, much bored by the dreary life of his little

fortress on the Rosetta river (a mouth of the Nile) decided to spend a few idle

hours rummaging among the ruins of the Nile Delta. And behold! he found a stone

which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else in Egypt it was covered with

little figures. But this particular slab of black basalt was different from

anything that had ever been discovered.

 

It carried three inscriptions. One of these was in Greek. The Greek language was

known. "All that is necessary," so he reasoned, "is to compare the Greek text

with the Egyptian figures, and they will at once tell their secrets."