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History of Science, a — Volume 1 by Henry Smith Williams;Edward Huntington Williams
page 27 of 297 (09%)

This is not the place to tell the story of his fascinating
discoveries and those of his successors. That story belongs to
nineteenth-century science, not to the science of the Egyptians.
Suffice it here that Young gained the first clew to a few of the
phonetic values of the Egyptian symbols, and that the work of
discovery was carried on and vastly extended by the Frenchman
Champollion, a little later, with the result that the firm
foundations of the modern science of Egyptology were laid.
Subsequently such students as Rosellini the Italian, Lepsius the
German, and Wilkinson the Englishman, entered the field, which in
due course was cultivated by De Rouge in France and Birch in
England, and by such distinguished latter-day workers as Chabas,
Mariette, Maspero, Amelineau, and De Morgan among the Frenchmen;
Professor Petrie and Dr. Budge in England; and Brugsch Pasha and
Professor Erman in Germany, not to mention a large coterie of
somewhat less familiar names. These men working, some of them in
the field of practical exploration, some as students of the
Egyptian language and writing, have restored to us a tolerably
precise knowledge of the history of Egypt from the time of the
first historical king, Mena, whose date is placed at about the
middle of the fifth century B.C. We know not merely the names of
most of the subsequent rulers, but some thing of the deeds of
many of them; and, what is vastly more important, we know, thanks
to the modern interpretation of the old literature, many things
concerning the life of the people, and in particular concerning
their highest culture, their methods of thought, and their
scientific attainments, which might well have been supposed to be
past finding out. Nor has modern investigation halted with the
time of the first kings; the recent explorations of such
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