| . ..-■." -••'■■ ■'■';' taKHS . Ilillll • • • .• .•• .». ••• • • . •• ••«•••-.-•• • • • "••• ••••••• ••••••' ■ Richard Lepsius A BIOGRAPHY BY GEORG EBERS TRANSLA TED FROM THE GERMAN BY ZOE DANA UNDERHILL WITH FRONTISPIECE : : •. ••• • ••••••• •••• • •••• •• • • *• • • • •••.». ••« •■ • • • t-Au-Mo«iz»i> cei-fti £>:*-:-•: : .••. • •• . • • ••• • • ••••••••••••• NEW YORK WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER II MURRAY STREET 1887 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1887 by William S. Gottsberger in the Office' of the Librarian ot Congress, at Washington • •••••• • • • • % • • • • • • •• ••• '• ••«••• • • •• • .• • TO DR. JOHANNES DUMICHEN, REGULAR PROFESSOR OF THE EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF STRASBURG. My dear Johannes! To you shall this biography be dedicated. As the eldest pupil of our master you have in a certain sense a right to it. From many conversations with you, and from your letters since his death, I have seen with what cheerful alacrity you were always prepared to recognize the great qualities of our Lepsius ; and how often, behind your back, has the departed spoken warmly to me of your enthusiastic and self-sacrificing devotion to our science. Accept this offering, then, as a slight countervailing gift for the many donations which you have bestowed upon me and every Egyptologist. Imitating the mas- ter's example you have followed him to Egypt, and there, like him, undertaken the task of disclosing to your colleagues at home the wealth of unexplored in- scriptions in which the temples and tombs of the Nile valley are still so rich. From hundreds of walls you have copied the pictorial and hieroglyphic decorations, and made them accessible for investigation by collect- ing them in convenient volumes. A stately row of 226499 folios, — yonder they stand and each contains cordial words which assure me of your faithful remembrance, — bears witness to your industry, the acuteness of your eye and intellect, and the precision of your hand. But few know what great sacrifices of comfort, sleep, health, and your own property, lie hidden within these volumes, for without assistance worth mentioning, either from the government or its chiefs, you, relying upon yourself alone, have achieved great results. You were aided by no firmans to afford you protection, no powerful patron to assume the cost of publication, no helpful fellow-traveller, as for years you made your way up the Nile far into the Sudan. Month after month have you been a self-invited guest of the god to whom the sanctuary of your choice was dedicated, you have passed the nights on a hard couch in a chamber of the temple which you desired to examine, and shared their scanty meal with the Arabs. To me it will ever be incomprehensible whence you derived the endurance to copy, through weeks of labor, the inscrip- tions on the walls of the tomb of Petuamenapt, the so- called bat sepulchre, while those misshapen creatures which dread the day extinguished your lights, flapped about you in swarms, and entangled themselves in that magnificent beard which procured for you among the Arabs the name of Abu Dakn (Father of the Beard). But your endurance has borne admirable fruits. Through you and your works the inscriptions of the time of Ptolemy, formerly neglected, have for the first time received due honor. The keys to many mysteries in lie concealed within them, and with what sagacity have you established the value of the enigmatical signs with which the priests during the Lagid period knew how to withdraw from the understanding of the multi- tude the mysteries to which they gave freer expression than their predecessors of earlier epochs. Golden Hathor of the beautiful countenance, under whose pro- tection you spent such long months of privation, has endowed you with her dearest sanctuary, that of Den- dera, entirely for your own, and Tehuti has aided you to apprehend correctly the fractional reckoning of the Egyptians, to determine many of their measures, and to make clear the division of the Egyptian land in ancient time. It is a delight to offer a gift to such a giver, and if mine, my dear Johannes, pleases you, I shall be happy. I have allowed neither diligence nor care to be lacking in its preparation, but nevertheless I should not have attained the goal which from the first I have had in view, if the family of the deceased had not com- mitted to my use, with such great kindness and noble confidence, all the materials at their disposal. Of the greatest service have been the diaries of Mrs. Lepsius, her husband's letters to her, to his parents, to Bunsen and many others, and the master's own memoranda in the form of note-books and diaries, or on scraps of paper and in little books of poetry, in which are also included the poems of Abeken, the family friend. The heads of the school, especially the principal, IV — Professor Volkmann, as well as Professor Buchbinder, willingly furnished me with such information as I de- sired ; memoirs and collections of letters already pub- lished helped me to make good many deficiencies, and where I wished to consult the records of public author- ities I have everywhere met with a courtesy which merits thanks. I owe special acknowledgment for the many communications, both by letter and word of mouth, which I have received from the eldest son of the deceased, Professor R. Lepsius of Darmstadt. As is natural, the principle materials have been drawn from the works of the master, and my own vivid memories of his character. The index to his writings will, I think, be welcome to you and to many colleagues. To bring it to the perfection which he had desired was a task attended with many difficulties. You must yourself judge whether the old adage "a pupil's praise is lame," is applicable to this biography. I am conscious of having handled my brush with love indeed, but also with all fidelity. On account of the great abundance of material there was far less need of original research than of sifting and selecting, and this had to be done with special pains and prudence in re- gard to the twenty-seven volumes of Mrs. Lepsius' in- teresting diary. I hope that you, the master's eldest pupil, will miss, in this likeness painted by the hand of friendship, no essential trait of the dead who was dear to us both, and that you will find that the artist has introduced into it no more of his own personality than may be permitted to an historian. He tenders you this book with affection, and knows that you will receive it in the same spirit from Your very faithful, Georg Ebers, Leipsic, Easter, 1885. CONTENTS, PAGE. Preface, - i Boyhood and Apprenticeship, - 3 The School, -------- 5 Leipsic, 9 GOTTINGEN, l8 Berlln, ^o The Journeyman, Paris, --__._ ^ Egyptological Studies, as Lepsius found them in 1834, 69 Lepsius in Paris as an Egyptologist, - , 79 lTAI - Y > 93 Holland, England, and the Season of Waiting, in Germany, 123 The Prussian Expedition to Egypt, under the di- rection of Lepsius, ------ '140 The Master Workman, 167 The Home of Lepsius, -.._.. 2 i8 Richard Lepsius as a Man, 282 Appendix: I. The Gottingen Insurrection, - - 301 44 II. Lepsius' Report to the Berlin Royal Academy of Sciences on the com- mencement of his Egyptological Studies, 308 44 III. Extract from the Report addressed to the Ministry, on the Acquisi- tions and Results of the Expedi- tion to Egypt under R. Lepsius, 314 Index to the works of R. Lepsius, - - - 325 RICHARD LEPSIUS, the head master of Egyptology, closed his eyes dur- ing the past summer, and his departure has been deeply lamented, not only in our own country, but among scholars of all lands. The task of portraying his life has fallen to me, and this task I have willingly assumed, for I am — with the exception of my dear and excel- lent friend and colleague, Diimichen of Strasburg — the oldest of his pupils. Till his latter end an intimate untroubled friendship united me to the beloved master, the benevolent promoter of my studies, the colleague, the man who followed with sympathy my poetical as well as my scientific productions. His family have assisted me in the kindest manner by placing at my disposal everything left by the deceased which could possibly aid my purpose. Diaries, memorandum books, letters of great interest, were submitted to my inspec- tion, and these abundant materials confirmed my con- viction that the personality of a German scholar has seldom presented so rounded and happily balanced a whole as that of the man whose life it has devolved upon me to describe. In him are united all things which can be required of a scholar in the highest sense of the word, and hence his biographer, while depicting the development, the individuality, and the vast activity 2 RKFARI) LKPSIUS. of the man, can at the same time present to his nation such a model, such a beautiful type, of the German master of science, as is worthy of imitation. In that great community which we call " the culti- vated world," and which has its home in every civilized land, the name of Richard Lepsius stands among those which are well known. Everyone within this circle knows, too, that he was a great Egyptologist. As one holds the diamonds in a king's crown for genuine, even if he sees them only from afar, so one believes in the value and importance of the works of the celebrated scholar, although one may not even so much as know their titles, and although it is scarcely granted to one amongst ten thousand to comprehend them, or even to study them deeply. The brief obituaries and biographical sketches pub- lished in the papers and periodicals shortly after the death of the great master, could give but a general idea of his labors, and yet these extended over many impor- tant domains of science, and his strong and firm hand laid the foundations upon which a long and varied series of future researches can and must be based. It will be ours to show, in a way accessible and intelligible to every educated person, of what nature were the scientific achievements to which Lepsius owed his high and well-deserved honor and renown, and what a man the nation lost in him. Georc. Ebers. BOYHOOD AND APPRENTICESHIP. Richard Charles Lepsius was born on the 23d of December, 18 10, at Naumburg on the Saal, a pretty town which rises pleasantly from the grape-grown foot- hills of the Thuringian forest. Here he passed his childhood among circumstances than which none more favorable could have been imagined for the future scholar and antiquarian. His father, afterwards President of the provincial court of justice and Privy Counsellor, was at that time Saxon Finance Procurator for the whole Thuringian district, and as such one of the leading men of the place and region. Naumburg is rich in fine buildings of the middle ages, and Charles Peter Lepsius, the father of young Richard, applied such leisure as his exacting occupations afforded him to searching out the history of these venerable monuments. It was he who founded the Thuringian-Saxon Archaeological Society, the seat of which was subsequently removed to Halle, and the three volumes of his short papers testify to his zeal and ability as an investigator. He is represented as a strict and methodical official, of distinguished bear- ing, as well as an indefatigable worker ; and precisely these qualities fell as a paternal inheritance to his son, and afterwards constituted the conditions of his great- ness. 4 RICHARD LEPSIUS. Among those remarkable men who have compassed high aims by means of marked qualities of tempera- ment or of the imaginative faculty, the maternal influ- ence has usually predominated, while in those cases where strength and acuteness of intellect have made a man great, the paternal character has commonly had most weight. A poet like Goethe, a man of faith like Augustine, a Napoleon Bonaparte, whose imagination transgressed all limits, owed what was best in them to their mothers; the mind of a Lepsius, severe, never seeking after uncertainties, but always inclined to pro- found research, must be an inheritance from the father. Throughout Thuringia and Saxony all who were interested in antiquities were connected with the archae- ologists and founders of the society at Naumburg, the air of the house in which the boy grew up was per- meated with historical and antiquarian interests, and its master early permitted his son to take part in those oc- cupations which he himself could only pursue as an amateur, and yet to which his tastes so entirely inclined. Thus it is easy to understand how the Minister of Finance, as soon as he recognized the scientific bent of his son, did everything to further it and to make of his child what he himself, under more favorable circum- stances; might have become: a great investigator to whom science should be all and everything, the end and aim of existence, in short, the vocation of life. THE SCHOOL. Circumstances facilitated the attainment of this pur- pose, for in the immediate vicinity of Naumburg was situated an excellent educational institution which, at the time when young Lepsius was received among its pupils, had already long attained that flourishing con- dition in which it still rejoices. Private teachers had given him his first instruction under the direction of his father, and at Easter, 1823, he was already, as a boy of twelve, qualified for admis- sion to the school, which begins with the third class of the Prussian gymnasiums. At that time Ilgen was principal of the school, but Professor Lange, his tutor, seems to have exerted a stronger influence than he over the pupils. The latter became principal after the departure of Lepsius in 1831, but unfortunately died a few months after assuming office. He is the only one of all his teachers whom Lepsius especially mentions in the biography attached to his " dissertation " and it is true that this man exercised a marked influence over his gifted pupil by his moral fervor, his great learning and spirited interpretations of the old classic writers. Professor Koberstein had come to the school three years before Lepsius, and had introduced new life into the teaching of German. He understood how to interest the pupils in ancient and mediaeval high Ger- man, and after the fashion of Tieck he read German 6 RICHARD LEPSIUS. and Shakespearian dramas at his own house in the evenings to a select circle. How greatly Lepsius was affected by the instruction of this able pedagogue and scholar may be seen from the so-called valedictory theme which he was obliged to compose and hand in before his departure, according to the custom in the school at that time. This painstaking essay, unusually mature for a lad of eighteen, handles the following sub- ject, selected by himself: "On the Influence which must be Exerted on the Tendency of Philology in General, and Especially of Classic Philology, by the Most Recent Methods of Treating German Grammar, and the Universal Comparison of Languages Arising from this and the Wider Knowledge of Sanscrit." It appears from the little sketch of his life appended to this essay that Koberstein had also given Lepsius special in- struction in ancient German and Italian. " The time which I spent with you will ever appear to me the bright spot of my life here," writes the pupil, on his de- parture from the excellent institution which he long remembered with affection and gratitude. And he had reason to be grateful to Koberstein, for in the valedictory theme mentioned above and com- posed under his auspices we see indicated, as it were, the path which, after much groping and many essays, the studies of Lepsius were finally to follow. With him, as with so many others, a vigorous indi- viduality had, even in his school-days, exerted a de- cisive .influence upon his subsequent intellectual ten- dencies. The elder Lepsius, the antiquarian, and THE SCHOOL. 7 Koberstein the accomplished linguist, indicated to their son and pupil from afar the goal for which he after- wards strove, it was reserved for others to be the guides who should determine and direct him thither. At Easter, 1829, Lepsius, then seventeen years old, passed the final examination with the general certificate I., and left the school with a body invigorated by the merry games of boyhood on the gymnastic-ground and skating-pond and in the swimming-school, with a mind well prepared for every study, and a thorough mastery of the old classical languages. How dear the school had been to him is shown by the following verses, taken from the farewell poem which he dedicated to it : " A thousand times I've wandered High on the mount above, And gazed with quiet rapture On the valley that I love. " Beyond, the silver river! And above, the shining skies ! While, beneath the mountain's shadow, What a happy dwelling lies ! " The gray walls seem to beckon, They summon me to go, And join the throng that gathers In the garden there below. " There many a youthful figure Weaves the merry game, I wis, But whence, ah whence, arises In my heart, this pensive bliss ?" 8 RICHARD LEPS1US. His father who, as president of the provincial court and commissioner for the examinations previous to matriculation, was a person of influence with the directors of the school, had desired that in the final scrutiny the performances of his son should be no more indulgently judged than those of every other alumnus. After Richard had been honored with the I., Ilgen wrote to his father in the following reassuring manner, having first announced the results of the examination : u You must on no account imagine that you are under obligations to any one. I assure you for my part that I would have done as I have, even if you were my worst enemy, and that I have only acted according to my conscience, as you may hear from Neue and Jacobi." It need not be said that young Lepsius was among the most prominent pupils of the institution. On the king's birthday, on the third of August, 1826, the task of composing and delivering a poem in honor of the festival was imposed upon him. He chose for his sub- ject " Albert of Babenberge," and handled it, skilfully enough, in the Nibelungen stanza. He derived great pleasure, in after days, from poeti- cal composition, and although he ardently devoted him- self to science from the very first, yet among the poems lying before us many a gay song bears witness to the vivacity of his youthful spirit LEIPSIC. The elder Lepsius kept most of the letters which his son wrote him from Leipsic, where he began his studies. They show how earnestly he took hold of the matter from the start, and how attentively the president of the court at Naumburg watched not only the practical daily life, but also the scientific activity of his son. The methodical official wished to be informed as to the ex- penditure of every groschen which he allowed his son, and the accounts accompanying the student's letters show us how cheaply it was possible to live in Leipsic some fifty years ago. A good din- ner, with soup, roast, and salad or compote, cost three groschen, Richard thought the morning coffee too dear at a groschen, the beer at dinner for fourteen days came to seven groschen, a room at the inn for one night was three groschen, a pat (half-pound) of butter was two groschen, three pfennigs. However, the hard-working student seems to have been absolved from this exact rendering of accounts in the third term, but it had been of great advantage to him, for it would have been impossible for him to bring the greatest of his subsequent works to such a successful issue, or in- deed to produce them at all, without the strict sense of order which he had acquired both by inheritance and training. For example, after his return from Egypt he was able without the slightest error to join and fit into IO RICHARD LEPSIUS. their- proper places the thousands of sheets of paper with which he had taken impressions of the inscriptions. This shows a painstaking exactness in the marking and numbering of each leaf such as had been practised by no previous traveller, not even by Champollion and Rosellini, in whose works errors are by no means rare. From the first, it was clear to him that he wished to study philology, but he hesitated for some time as to what course he should pursue afterwards. He had presented himself at the proper time, but in those days the professors took things easily. Godfrey Hermann, of whom he had the highest expectations, only began to lecture after Whitsuntide, " most of the others, such as Beck, Rost, Nobbe, Weiske, only at the beginning of June." The first course of lectures which he at- tended was Wachsmuth's " Universal History." " I was much pleased," he writes to his father, " with his introduction, in which he expressed his views on the exposition of the general conception, on the division and proper treatment of history. He has besides an agreeable fluent delivery, and a very pleasant voice. Yet his public lectures on Roman History, which fol- lowed immediately, were almost more interesting to me. Here his discourse is perfectly unfettered, be- cause he has already laid his foundations in the pre- ceding lectures on Universal History. Roman History is a department to which he has given special atten- tion, and in the treatment of which he repeatedly differs from those views of Niebuhr's which have intro- duced a new epoch. On this account it is very inter- LEIPSIC. II esting to hear him criticise Niebuhr, of whom, however, he speaks with the greatest respect." The philosopher Krug he had imagined as quite a different person and much younger. He writes to his father of him : " He has the face of an old philosopher, and it is so beset with solemn wrinkles that at first I could not reconcile it with the biting satirical wit which one finds in his writings. His eyes, however, are very brilliant, and they wander perpetually over the ceiling as if he were unaware of the presence of auditors, during the quiet almost monotonous, but pointed discourse, in which he never blunders or hesi- tates for a syllable." From what might be called the more fortuitous selection of the other courses of lectures which he attended, it is apparent with how little consciousness of his ultimate goal he began his studies, and he makes his father the confidant of his indecision. , The inter- esting letter of the seventh of August, 1829, which we give herewith, shows the young aspirant for the right path in the best light, and proves that he had just dis- cerned in the great philologist, Godfrey Hermann, the man in Leipsic from whom he had most to gain. Before the end of his first term he writes to his father in this letter : " It will naturally be far more difficult for me to give you a satisfactory explanation of my position re- garding science, than regarding practical affairs, since I will not even boast of having come to fixed views on 12 RICHARD LEPSIUS. the subject myself. Indeed I consider it a main point during the first part of my stay at the University, and one by no means easily or quickly settled, to come to an understanding with myself about this, and to take a steady survey of my whole course in life, but particu- larly of my studies. For I feel more and more this important distinction between the school and the uni- versity, that here one is suddenly deprived of all guid- ance and special instruction as to the direction which one should pursue. The many beginnings made at school, without any definite aim in view, must be either continued or abandoned, either pursued more zealously or regarded as a side issue, according to one's own choice and judgment. On this account, too, I do not reproach myself that as yet I have no unalterable plan nor perfect system in my studies, since scarcely anyone could have made such a decision so quickly, or, were such a hastily formed scheme adopted, it might lead to a one-sided development which should be most foreign to philology especially. Altogether, there is no science in which this question can be more important and at the same time more difficult, than in ours, since we have no positive series of lectures to observe, like the lawyers, doctors, and theologians, but each must choose and trace out his own road over the boundless field of philology, according to his own powers and in- dividual character. Now, so far as my purely scientific education is concerned, from the very beginning two main paths present themselves, between which most stu- dents make a voluntary or involuntary choice ; namely, LEIPSIC. 13 philology proper and archaeology. Naturally, they are so closely connected that one can never be entirely di- vorced from the other, but nevertheless every one de- votes himself more to one than the other. Indeed either of the two departments alone is sufficiently exten- sive to demand all the powers of one person. This distinction between, and this independence of, the two branches have been most fully illustrated in our two greatest philologists, Hermann and Bockh, each of whom has formed his own school, entirely distinct from the other. I would think it rash and foolish at present to wish to decide in favor of either, since I know too little of either to make such a decision from my own con- viction and independent judgment. In any case it is well for me at first, as far as possible, to attach myself to the school of Hermann, and apply myself entirely to languages, for an accurate knowledge of languages is an indispensable foundation in every other branch, and certainly there can nowhere be found a more accom- plished teacher than Hermann, even if there actually are more learned men, which I will not dispute. I learn daily to admire more his incomparable clearness and acuteness in the exercise of the soundest criticism. I lis- ten attentively and with pleasure to his lectures, and per- haps in time will try to become a member of his Greek club, which has already trained eminent philologists and given the first impulse to many learned works " Some time ago Graser * was in Leipsic, only in * F. W. Graser, born at Luckau, 1801, studied in Leipsic, 1819- 23, 1823 Head Master at the Royal Grammar School at Halle, 1827 Sub-Principal in Naumburg, 1831 Deputy Principal and 1846 Princi- 14 RICHARD LEPSIUS. passing through, but he let himself be persuaded to re- main here several days in order to have the pleasure of seeing Hermann. He went to Hermann's lectures regularly, and was quite enthusiastic about him. At six o'clock he went as a guest to the Greek club, of which he had previously been an honored member. I too went as a guest. There was a discussion concerning a paper on several passages from Plato De legibus, and it was not long before Graser broke in, with a prodi- gious flood of compliments by way of preface, but with much learning and great acuteness, and gave his opinion on several of the passages. Hermann received it very well. Then they fell to making panegyrics upon each other, and Graser was so inspired by Hermann's re- joinders that time after time he exclaimed, with every gesture of admiration : Admiro?-, admiror in genii tui acumen praestiuitissimum, vir i//us/ris y venerande, and so on, so that the members were all in a great state of amazement over it. But he spoke good, fluent Latin, and what he said was very scholarly and clever. Fi- nally, Hermann made another little eulogium upon him. These two hours gave me far more pleasure than if I had spent an evening at the theatre, for it is not every day that one can see such enthusiasm as was expressed pal at Guben, 1854 Principal at Torgau, 1863 Deputy Principal at the Abbey of Our Blessed Lady in Magdeburg, until 1869. Now lives as a private gentleman in Potsdam. In the Renunciation programme of thirty-seven doctors of philosophy on the 4th of March, 1824, (De epitritris Doriis dissertatio). G. Hermann says of him : A Beckio in Seminarium Regium, a me in Societatem Graecam receptus, utrigue nostrum et propter studiorum diligentiam, et propter praeclarum in- genium insignemque morum humanitatem et suavitatem valde pro- batus est. LEIPSIC. "15 here for Hermann ; it was so genuine, and yet in its whole essence so intelligent and clear." This letter, certainly unusually mature and thought- ful for a lad of eighteen, is followed by many others, from which we may see how judiciously Lepsius knew how to divide his time, with what diligence he not only attended lectures, but also twice a day read Greek and Roman classics with his friend Schweckendieck for hours, and still found time to practise music, play chess and visit socially, a welcome guest, among families of good standing in Leipsic. Shortly before the outbreak of the revolution of July, there was a significant fermen- tation among the German students. After the momen- tous Carlsbad Decrees, and in consequence of the " Executive Order " carried through by Metternich, the University was placed under political supervision " for. the security of public order." Thus it became not only dangerous to take an active share in the movement for liberty, but even to have any close intercourse with a fellow-student who was suspected of having taken part in " seditious intrigues," and what were not so styled by the wretched oppressors of political liberty during the supremacy of Metternich's influence ? How anxious must the Naumburg Landrath have felt when he learned that an older fellow-student of his son's, of whom the latter wrote to him with great warmth, was involved in demagogic alliances in his na- tive city of Brunswick, at that time a centre of the political dissatisfaction which was soon to lead -to the l6 RICHARD LEPS1US. expulsion of Duke Charles. This singularly talent- ed man, named Silberschmidt, was ten years older than young Richard, and had interested him greatly. He had an eventful life behind him, and was so thoroughly at home in the most diverse departments of science, that Lepsius described him to his father as a " universal genius." In his nine-and-twentieth year he began to study law, had essayed all possible branches of litera- ture, had been page to the King of Westphalia in Cas- sel, huntsman and fencing-master, said he had studied in Giessen, written a dissertation " On the Immortality of the Soul," a book on the art of fencing, many dramas, reviews, etc., and called himself also the au- thor of a work on chess. Lepsius who, even as a student, was already an able chess-player, recognized in his fel- low-lodger one of the greatest masters of this noble game, and when he visited Silberschmidt in his apart- ment the latter showed him a very remarkable testi- monial. It contained a certificate from the parish of Strobeck, in Halberstadt, that it had been beaten at chess by Silberschmidt. This was subscribed by the local town magistrate, and stamped with the seal of the parish. The parish in question enjoyed a wide celebrity on account of its chess playing, in which every peasant was a master, and in which even the boys had to pass an examination. Old electoral foundations had endowed the people of Strobeck with great privi- leges and possessions on account of their skill in this game. They had never been beaten until Silberschmidt had appeared to concjuer them. A Jew from Bruns- LEIPSIC. 17 wick had also told Richard's landlord that his re- markable new friend was the most famous of all living chess-players. As he also proved to be " pleasant, and anything but conceited," and showed himself " an in- dustrious man of excellent moral principles, and at the same time always cheerful and interesting in his con- versation," Richard supposed he could derive nothing but benefit from intercourse with him. All that he writes to his father of the Brunswicker proves the bril- liant talents of the latter, but also shows that he tried to win his younger fellow-student by boasting. Silber- schmidt had spoken to Lepsius about his demagogic asso- ciations, and as soon as the father had warned his son against this dangerous man, Richard knew how to with- draw from the connection with tact and address. Here, as in every similar case, the youth, scarcely past his boyhood, shows himself entirely submissive to the superior wisdom of his father, and at the same time he already evinces the discretion which he afterwards ex- hibited in every position in which he was placed during a long life in the midst of the world, where there could not fail to be conflicts and collisions of every kind. At the end of the second term at Leipsic he debated with his father whether he should not exchange the Leipsic University for another, and in this consultation also we see him weigh the pros and cons with a clear head and great circumspection. To Leipsic he was at- tached by many a good comrade and many a pleasant family, from whom he had received kindness, and^ be- neath whose roof he had sung and danced and been 1 8 RICHARD LEPSIUS. treated like a son of the house. Of the academic in- structors, Hermann alone detained him on the Pleisse, and as the latter intended to travel during the coming summer term, he decided on a change of University. At first his father had some objection, we can no longer fathom what, to Gottingen, whither Richard most de- sired to go. He therefore weighed Berlin, to which he was particularly attracted by Boeckh, Lachmann, C. Ritter and Bopp, against Bonn, where he had the high- est expectations of Welcker and Niebuhr. In his last letter from Leipsic the son decides for the Rhenish University, but during the vacation, which brought him and his father once more together, he seems to have succeeded in inducing the latter to accede to his desire to enter the Georgia Augusta, and so we see him, in the spring of 1830, proceed to Gottingen by way of Eisen- ach and Cassel, where he saw Spohr conduct a per- formance of " The White Lady." GOTTINGEN. On the eight of May Lepsius arrived in Gottingen, and found good lodgings with the tailor, Volkmann, 129 Kurze Street. For fellow-lodger he had again his friend Schweckendieck of Leipsic, with whom he con- tinued to work and to read Greek and Latin classics. He took with him excellent letters of introduction to those professors of whom he expected most, Otfried M tiller, Dissen, and the Grimms, and was thus received GOTTINGEN. 1 9 by them in the kindest manner. During the first term he attended the lectures of Dissen, on Universal Sci- ence ; of Miiller, on Archaeology and Thucydides j of J. Grimm, on Ancient Law, and of Beneke, on the Poems of Walter von der Vogelweide. All that he writes to his father concerning the more illustrious of his teachers, is interesting enough. It shows us how here in Gottingen, and especially through listening to and associating with Otfried Miiller, Dissen, and the Grimms, science was revealed to him in a new and clearer light. We observe, too, how his mind became accustomed to take cognizance of a subject as a whole, and to its fullest extent, and yet preserve due re- gard to details; how he acquired his esthetic ideals, and how he laid the foundation for those works which were afterwards to make him famous, not only in phil- ology, but also in history, the history of art, and myth- ology. His first visit was paid to the excellent scholar and sufferer, G. L. Dissen, the illustrious editor of Pindar, Tibullus and Demosthenes. " I can give you briefly," he tells his father, " what I noted down of Dissen's views on my return from him. ' Above all else,' he said, ' the time has come to elevate hermenentics, the advanced science of exegesis, for the old poets as well as prose writers, to a higher standard. Up to this time scholars have usually been content to expound the words in their grammatical connection, and according to their significance in the dictionary or by the rules of syntax. They have sought to discover 20 RICHARD LEPSIUS. the meaning of detached passages, or perhaps the ?iexus senteiitiarum. But they have neither recognized nor ex- pressed in a sufficient manner the inestimable superior- ity of the Greek language especially, in the per- fect correspondence between thought and form, — in the possibility of easily reproducing the least modula- tion of thought by an appropriate adaptation of the ex- pression. Nor have they known how to detect the deep technical design, the economy of words, of poems, of choral songs, which can be shown everywhere, and which is executed with admirable poetical perfec- tion, as well as with severe logical art. Yet the superi- ority of the ancients consists precisely in this, that in their works they develop in admirable harmony these two powers, lofty poetic inspiration in the conception, and clear, penetrating judgment in the execution. It is just this that separates them from the poesy of to-day, in which one side is almost always cultivated at the ex- pense of the other. Classic poetry and the whole of classic literature is not yet, by any means, valued as it should be, and it is now incumbent upon hermenentics to instruct us therein, and to exhibit in detail all the treasures of classical literature to their profoundest depths. Such commentaries as are at present written upon the ancients usually contain explanations of iso- lated words, and matters which often have but a very slight connection with the text. They consist for the most part of general remarks on grammar, and are compiled from collectanea. Such dull and lifeless handiwork should at least be abandoned to those who GOTTINGEN. 21 can attain no higher standpoint of science ; but the higher hermenentics must proceed from the basis of grammatical knowledge, which is requisite in every case, to point out in their works the genius and art of the ancients. A correct understanding of the separate parts can only be attained by steadily keeping in view the essential order, the fundamental idea, and it can be proved repeatedly with regard to Hermann that he has neglected this in his writings and commentaries, or he would have perceived that often, in a chorus, the notes to strophe and anti-strophe contradict each other. Pindar especially must be treated in this way." Lepsi- us then describes the law which Dissen thinks he has found to be observed, in an analogous manner, through all the poems of Pindar. " I was also received very cordially," writes Rich- ard to his father, "by O. M tiller. He is just such a man as I had expected, and that is saying a great deal ; his whole external appearance, even, corresponded amazingly to the idea which I had formed of him. This morning he depicted himself most aptly in de- scribing the Greek character. He is at the same time earnest and vivacious, enthusiastic and calm, imagina- tive and lucid. This is, of course, most applicable to the manner in which he expresses himself in his lec- tures, yet his whole character is so transparently manifest- ed in them, especially in the first lectures on the archae- ology of art, that it is safe to draw conclusions thence as to all other relations. He has besides an almost ideally fine figure, an expressive countenance which ex- 22 RICHARD LEPSIUS. hibits real humanity, and a distinct, sonorous voice. His lectures are almost entirely extemporaneous, as far as the subject permits, enthusiastic, yet calm too, clear and convincing." Jacob Grimm he calls a " very kind-hearted, unaf- fected man. This is apparent in everything. He is also prodigiously learned in every possible direction, but yet, it seems, very easily embarrassed in expressing himself, perhaps because he does not yet feel at home among the affectations of Gottingen life." Later he learned to esteem the brothers Grimm more and more highly, and met with the most cordial reception in their house. " Eight days ago," he writes to his father, " I dined with the Grimms, and I cannot praise the family enough to you. The whole family are simplicity and affection personified, and it is especially funny to see these two men forget all their immense learning, and play with their little Hermann, until the mother really becomes quite troubled lest he should be spoiled. William, the husband, is still more agreeable and easy in conversation," (than Jacob). In Otfried M tiller's Seminary, to which he, as well as his friends Schweckendieck and Gravenhorst, was ad- mitted, he reaped an abundant intellectual harvest, and the Gottingen Philological Society, into which he had been received as a member, was also of great benefit to him. This consisted of seven or eight of the best young philologists, elected by vote, who met once every week (on Tuesdays, at half past seven o'clock). They be- gan by discussing some critical paper presented by a GOTTINGEN. 23 member, often in the presence of O. M tiller. This was submitted for inspection to each member, who was free to make remarks upon it, and defend his own views. The business of the society was then transacted, and finally they all sat sociably together, engaged in pleas- ant and serious conversation, and cosily enjoyed their beer and tobacco, both of which the society was bound to furnish. Lepsius informs his father that he, who always before expected to play five persona muta, to his astonishment here became a homo disputax, which he did not indeed, in its full sense, exactly desire, but which still appeared to him a much more interesting role than that of the persona muta. Upon the whole, Miiller, in Gottingen, exerted the deepest and most lasting influence over him. Thus while, in Leipsic, he had still hesitated whether he should devote himself to the grammatical or the arch- aeological division of philology, he here decided in favor of the latter, although without entirely losing sight of the former. No other scholar of that time had such a lofty and far-reaching apprehension of archaeol- ogy as Otfried Miiller, and hence we see Lepsius allow himself to be locked in daily for hours, in order to trace on transparent paper the copper-plates from all the works which had at that time appeared on the archi- tecture and plastic art of the ancients. He wished to make their forms his own, and to retain them in his possession, even if in the unsatisfactory shape of copies. The architectural pictures thus traced he afterwards copied at home. 24 RICHARD LEPSIUS. All that M tiller had to offer the students, whether in the lecture-room, in the seminary, or by personal inter- course, was received by Lepsius with enthusiasm, and at the close of the term, he wrote to his father : " To- morrow Mtiller will finish the historical portion of his archaeology, and thus once more lies fully extended be- fore my vision a new branch of science, which, if any so deserves, should be called the very flower of science. It is fostered, too, with such unusual care as none other receives, and rejoices in such noble foundations as the Institute for Archaeological Correspondence, which, for two years, has been under the patronage of our Crown Prince (afterwards Frederick William IV.). The Central Board of Directors are in Rome, and thence it extends over the whole of northern Europe, with the co-operation of almost all eminent scholars and experts. Its results in the various departments of science are recorded in several languages, and within a few weeks are spread abroad from Syracuse to Belt, from Paris to Petersburg. So that any one should in- deed be accounted fortunate who is in a position to obtain even a superficial comprehension of the whole of this immeasurable field, whose boundaries cannot even be discerned, if we have regard only to the material yet to be obtained. For even such compre- hension will furnish the means for a more thorough understanding and farther progress." To secure these very means, he continued to work hard under O. M tiller's direction. Yet he could not, at that time, foresee that he himself was destined, first to GOTTINGEN. 25 enter into close connection with that Archaeological In- stitute at Rome of which he writes to his father, and finally to be chosen one of its directors. In Gottingen also he was a welcome guest in some of the best professors' families, and his refined and re- ticent nature led him, as he wrote to his father, to pre- fer social intercourse in pleasant families, and profitable communion with one or two friends, even to the assem- blies of the Philological Society, where he took little pleasure in the rough comradeship and the enforced in- timacy with many a young fellow with whom he had really little in common. Whenever a superior artistic performance was pro- duced, he know how to profit by it here, as he had • done before during his stay in Berlin. When Paganini came to Gottingen, he and Schweckendieck took a seat together (it cost a thaler and a half), and he went to the second half of the concert after his friend had en- joyed the first. " It would be useless," he writes, " to try to describe in any way Paganini's playing. One can only comprehend the nature and method of such play- ing while he is actually playing ; afterwards one loses sight of nearly every measuring scale that could be applied to it, in order to retain it in the imagi- nation." His interest in politics had also been excited by the revolution of July, and in order to follow political events and changes, he subscribed, at that time, to the Hamburg Correspondent. He prudently keeps out of the way of the Brunswicker Silberschmidt, who was in- 26 RICHARD LEPSIUS. volved in "seditious intrigues," when he meets him again in Gottingen, and mentions that by his fellow- students, who almost universally called themselves " Republicans," he was accounted a Conservative and aristocrat, on account of his well-known monarchial tendencies. During a pedestrian tour in the long vacation of 1830, which took him into the Hartz, to Hanover, etc., he was to become witness of an historical incident, and soon afterwards, at Gottingen, to be an onlooker at a revolution. Unfortunately, the limits of this biography forbid our giving in full the letters addressed to his father by the active young wanderer through the Hartz, so sus- ceptible to all that was beautiful or remarkable. We can only mention here his experiences in and around Bruns- wick. He had been invited thither by Gravenhorst, his fellow-student at Gottingen, whose parents were to be his hosts. His travelling-companions separated from him at Blankenburg, and he had still nine post- miles to travel alone. "As I walked on the 'Faust' which I had brought with me luckily occurred to me, and for the rest of the way I occupied myself with learning some of the scenes by heart, which shortened the road wonderfully. Meanwhile the Brocken was brewing behind me, soon the whole range was envel- oped in thick mist, and thick rain clouds gathered, which were driven towards me by a violent wind. It was indeed a splendid sight as the storm came on, but it inspired me with no very pleasant anticipations of the GOTTINGEN. 27 time when it should reach me, and now I regularly be- gan to run a race with the rain, which came more from one side; twice it actually caught me, another time I could only escape it by hard running. So it happened that I got over four post-miles in four hours without once stopping, and I should soon have finished the fifth when a postilion called to me to ask whether I would not like to ride back with him to Brunswick in an hour." The young traveller accepted the offer, and sat down in the inn to wait. for the conveyance. "While I," he writes, " sat with a glass of beer at the big oaken table, knapsack and stick beside me, reading this poem of all poems (Faust), this poem which unites the heights and depths of human life, conceived and represented by such a genius, one by one there assembled at this and a neighboring table some wagoners, a tipsy shopkeeper, and some mechanics, who entertained themselves after their own fashion, talked politics, railed, and so formed an incomparable foreground to sonie of the scenes in Faust. The events at Brunswick particularly were represented and criticized in the most glaring and origi- nal colors ; in short, my Faust played upon a stage such as could scarcely be found again." After this prelude, he was himself to take part, at Brunswick, in the conclusion of the tragic-comic rev- olutionary drama which occurred there. The father of his friend, Gravenhorst, was chief of police, and in the hospitable house of this man, who had been concerned as an active participant in all the phases of the expul- sion and reinstatement of the Duke, Lepsius had a good ^8 RICHARD LEPSIUS. opportunity to obtain an authentic account of all that had happened. " Naturally," writes the young traveller, " the con- versation fell chiefly on present events, which, however, interested me none the less, because I had long been well acquainted with them, and was now here on the very spot, besides being in the house of the chief of po- lice, where we received each of the fresh reports, which crowded in every hour, at first hand and in the most trustworthy manner. No excess had occurred beyond the burning of the castle (at the expulsion of the Duke Charles in 1830), .... but all the lamps had been smashed and several of the windows. I will copy for you some of the lampoons, of which Gravenhorst has fifty or sixty, as they all have to be handed in here. You may see from them the universal feeling against ' Charley,' as he is called, the former Duke. The rage against him was, and still is, indescribable, but it is com- pletely justified against such a scum of all humanity. Fortunately (and a sign, too, that the burning of the castle did not proceed from the mob, which is notori- ous here), there was rescued from the fire one chest alone, with private papers and books, amongst which the black and the blue book are especially noticeable. In one are recorded all the officials, and beside the names are remarks by the Duke in his own handwrit- ing, such as ' dog,' ' blockhead,' « must be worried to death,' * he shall be invited, allow to stand for three hours in the ante-chamber, and then told it was a mis- take,' ' he is to be provoked to a duel until he sends a GOTTINGEN. 2£ challenge, then dismissed,* etc' Beside all the police officials stood three crosses, beside Gravenhorst and his brother-in-law, Langerfeldt, four. Gravenhorst's succes- sor had also already been decided on. In the other book was the record of the secret police, and an auto- graph essay on the best mode of tyrannizing, in which there are the most abominable things, such as one would not credit if the majority of the maxims had not been already carried out in detail. I could repeat a hun- dred anecdotes of him which are all notorious here, but are not known abroad ; they all show that the Duke, in his miserable, tyrannical life, was not only a man devoid of all heart, but also actually without common-sense. By this you may measure the fury with which all the inhabitants of Brunswick were filled when it came at last to acts of violence, and the rejoicing with which William,** the brother of the banished Charles, and the last scion of the house, is received here." The reception which was prepared for the new Duke seems indeed to have been especially cordial. While the deputies delivered the address to the new prince, Lepsius saw the populace rejoicing and singing the LaFayette hymn, and G6tte,t " with all his coarse- ness, a very droll man," quietly submit to the honors which were heaped upon him. " They wanted to go * In this way the official class, the "chickens." as the Duke called them, and the nobility, were driven to revolt. It was these two classes, and not the populace, who expelled the Duke. ** Duke William, of Brunswick, recently deceased. t The following fragment of a popular song gives some informa- tion in regard to this citizen, Gotte. It was discovered by my friend. 30 RICHARD LEPSIUS. back to Richmond in crowds, and Gotte gave out songs which were to be sung there. The Duke's an- swer to the address was read amid great rejoicings. Every one was carried away by the happiest hopes of the future. Then they flocked to Richmond. The Duke was still at dinner. Permission was requested to sing the song : " Hail to Thee, William." The Duke came out with General Hertzberg and several others, and remained standing during the whole song, which was sung by the crowd to a musical accompaniment. He then caused several citizens of consideration, who stood near, to be summoned, conversed graciously with them, etc. The rejoicing is indescribable, and the Brunswick ladies especially take the most active part in it all." An illumination was announced for the evening, and as Lepsius' friends, who were members of the city militia, had to patrol, he also, to his delight, took a gun Professor H. Guthe, who aided me in obtaining farther particulars about Gotte : POEM ON CITIZEN G6TTE IN BRUNSWICK. Hurrah for citizen Gotte, The man of the August gate ; He's half a Lafayette, The " Lafa " we abate. It was he that didn't tremble, To the Duke he pushed his way, And without asking questions, Told him the truth that day The continuation of this folk-song is unknown. " Yette " is sup- posed to be equivalent to " Gotte," and it was certainly intended by the ingenious poet that our " Laffe " (dandy) should be recognized in " Lafa." GOTTINGEN. 3 1 over his shoulder, and as an impromptu soldier, accom- panied them through the brightly-lighted streets, unob- served and unmolested. The main guard, where the patrol finally came to anchor, was stationed on the old market-place, just opposite to the very beautifully-illu- minated town-hall. Here he first listened to several re- markable narratives, and then heard them sing the so- called " ballad," a satirical poem on the banished Duke Charles. The author himself, a goldsmith, sang the verses, and the whole chorus joined in the refrain, " Go ahead slowly !" It sounded very well. The first verse of this song, which in every respect was very moderate, ran thus : " For a little while things went ill that day, For they taught him manners, they taught him right ; They hunted him shamefully far away, And his flaming castle they gave him for light. But go ahead slowly, go ahead slowly, So that we may all hear it well." The last stanza greets the new Duke thus : ' ' And not long after another man came, That can rule the land far better than he ; So hurrah with me for that man's name, That frees us from the yoke of tyranny. But go ahead slowly, go ahead slowly, So that we may all hear it well." Richard copied off this song of nine stanzas, as well as all the documents relating to the Duke's expul- sion which he could get possession of, and sent the copies to his father. He was in the habit of thus col- 32 RICHARD LEPSIUS. lecting and writing out in his letters all that he thought could possibly give pleasure to his family in Naumburg. He maintained throughout his whole life this affection- ate endeavor to show his gratitude to his father and to requite his love with deeds. He wished him not only to sympathize with his serious labors, but also to par- ticipate in everything amusing which he encountered, and to this category belonged the following verse, which he found on a sandstone pillar in the mill-stone quarry at Mansfield : "If any man doth damage to This quarry or its products, do, He shall be punished according to law And the state of the circumstances." During his fourth term (the second at Gottingen), Lepsius attended the lectures of O. M tiller on Grecian Antiquities, Persius and Juvenal; of Dissen, on the oratio pro corona of Demosthenes ; of Heeren, on the History of the European States, and of Ewald, on the Elements of Sanscrit. This language, indispensable for the linguist, and whose importance for the philologist also he had recognized even when at school, he had wished to study in Leipzig, but had not before been able to find time for it. He became one of H. Ewald's most industrious pupils, though at first only with a view to general comparative philology, to which he now intended to devote himself with special zeal, in ad- dition to his archaeological and historical studies. " Ewald," he writes, «■ reads his Sanscrit Grammar in GOTTINGEN. $$ his room before five or six hearers, a great advantage for us, for he has an extremely low voice, though at the same time he speaks with extraordinary clearness and correctness. As I have always taken special interest in general comparative philology, I am so much the more delighted that Ewald enters into this largely, and does not always confine himself to Sanscrit. He by no means adheres strictly to Bopp's Grammar. A great deal he gives in a more general way, and many things more briefly, and, as is always the case in oral teaching, everything more plainly : in Bopp, too, one finds nothing of comparison with other languages.'* When Lepsius wrote these words, and even after his first meeting with Bopp in Berlin, he did not foresee that this was the scholar to whom he should afterwards be indebted for his own method in this very science of comparative philology. The winter term, begun with great enthusiasm, was to meet with an unexpected interruption, for in Decem- ber, 1830, the noted Gottingen revolution broke out. Richard, indeed only witnessed it as an impartial spectator, but it was followed by the closing of the lecture-rooms and the expulsion of many students. Even Lepsius could only escape this order with difficulty, under many conditions, and after his patrons and instructors had interceded for him. He naturally describes the " Gottingen Revolution " most minutely to his father, and his first letter on this subject we annex as an appendix to these pages.* * See appendix I. 3 34 RICHARD LEPSIUS. During the time that the government prohibited the professors from lecturing, Lepsius pursued the studies which he had commenced with undiminished assiduity, and he says in his letters that the closer personal inter- course with the instructors amply compensated him for the suspended lectures. In the following summer term of 1831, his fifth, he attended, and always with the same enthusiasm, O. M tiller's lectures on Archaeology, on Grecian Antiqui- ties, and on Tragic Art among the Greeks and its interpretation of the Homeric Hymns. He continued to follow Mitscherlich's exposition of the Pharsalia of Lucan, and pursued Sanscrit with Ewald. He advanced the study of this important language so far into the foreground of his scientific labors that he placed himself in open opposition to the old philologi- cal school. This he did in conjunction with the two friends who, with himself, composed the clover leaf of Ewald's auditory. In the spirit of F. A. Wolf, and encouraged by O. M tiller, he wished to become ac- quainted with ancient humanity, not only in its entity but also in its development. He was no longer con- tented with learning Greek and Latin, and although his admiration was still excited by Hermann's rational presentation of the grammar according to the princi- ples of Kant, the elegance and acuteness of his criti- cism, and his original investigations in the domain of metric art, yet he nevertheless desired to follow his lead no longer, but had turned his attention to antiquity in its universal and interdependent evolution. His object GOTTINGEN. 35 was to trace out the origin of the ancient languages and their relation to each other, and the growth and blossoming of the art and intellectual life of the ancients. Therefore, under Ewald's tuition, he became a Sanscrit scholar and a comparative linguist, under the guidance of O. M tiller, an archaeologist who was also interested in comparative mythology, and, powerfully influenced by Heeren and Dahlmann, a historian. If we picture to ourselves the nature of the scientific aspirations of our friend, and the advances which he had made, we can only wonder that even at Gottingen he had not already turned his eyes towards Egypt, where many a branch of the art and learning of the ancients has its root. Nevertheless, as we shall see, he was to be led thither by external circumstances, which at the time, however, coincided with his own inclinations. He attended Dahlmann's course on " Ancient History," and wrote of him to his father : " He pleases me extremely; he is just as far from giving a dry skeleton of the chief events, without grasping history in its higher significance, as he is from serving up gen- eralities and conclusions based upon theories instead of facts. An upright mind, and an earnest nature which must inspire respect, are united in him to the clear penetrating sagacity which sifts a subject and seizes its essential points. This makes him as skillful and pre- eminent in scientific research in the domain of ancient history as he is in the study of the politics of the most recent times, with which he principally and most sue- 36 RICHARD LEPSIUS. cessfully occupies his remaining time. His mode of presenting his theme is especially distinguished by a perfect command and critical examination of the very extensive subject-matter, whose most important periods he understands how to characterize and place in the proper light in brief yet apposite phrases. His discourse is distinguished by quiet, clear, singularly fine, indeed classical language, not a word too much or too little." We know no more happy sketch of the excellent Dahlmann as an academical teacher. Dissen, whose influence had especially attached Lepsius to classical philology at Gottingen, had become so ill that he could offer him but little more. Besides, the pupil had been more and more alienated from the excellent, but irritable and feeble scholar, by his doc- trinary and over-subtle mode of systematizing. " Un- fortunately," he writes, " Dissen is not yet at all restored to health ; he suffers from excessive weakness and sleeplessness. As he often feels very lonely and depressed through the night, he frequently has some of the students with whom he is more intimately ac- quainted to sit up with him. He lies on the sofa with his clothes on and has something read aloud to him, or converses with them, till now and then he catches a little nap. I shall go there to-day or to-morrow, and Kreiss, who has offered to do the same, is in great dis- tress about it, because he inevitably falls asleep about ten o'clock, even when he is reading aloud. Dissen considers himself sicker now than he really is, by which he only makes his sickness worse." GOTTINGEN. 37 This opinion was mistaken, and was proved to be so by the painful end of the distinguished scholar.* In the autumn of 1831, at the conclusion of this fruitful summer term, Lepsius begged his father for per- mission to follow his best friend, Kreiss, to his home at Strasburg, in Alsace, and to pass the holidays there in the house of Kreiss's parents. Just at this time the court president had incurred great expenses, yet he was willing to comply with his son's wish, if the latter could assure him that he expected to derive substantial scien- tific advantages from the proposed journey. " As I am well acquainted," runs the answer, " with your present circumstances of which you write, and how all your expenses accumulate just at this time, it would be foolish and very wrong of me to expect from you any considerable sum for a pure pleasure trip. You yourself make your permission dependent upon your firm conviction that I shall derive from this trip great, and not trifling, gains for my scientific as well as for my general education, and indeed on a moderate sum. Of the former I cannot say so much, since the literary advantages will be confined to the diligent, and let us hope, more intelligent and judicious considera- tion of the treasures of art on the way, and whatever chance may possibly throw into my hands at the library in Strasburg. But I cannot overlook the in- direct benefit, dependent upon forming the acquaint- ance of so many learned men, which must conduce to * Dissen died in 1837, after a long and severe illness, at the age of fifty-three. $8 RICHARD LEPSIUS. advancement in my general culture. For I may well say that this lies no less near to my heart, and has always done so, than purely philological progress ; in- deed, I have always regarded them as quite inseparable, one completing and sustaining the other. But if I can say of none of my former excursions that they were mere pleasure trips, from which I derived no substan- tial benefit, still less would it be true of this next one, to which I should address myself with better prepara- tion and more knowledge than to any previous jour- ney. Besides, I could neither make up for it in the future, during my final years of study, when my time will be still more limited, nor could I ever again ex- pect to meet so good an opportunity." Lepsius remained faithful to this desire for general culture throughout his later years, and it preserved the indefatigable investigator, who was often obliged to devote the best part of his time and energy to ap- parently trivial scientific problems, from becoming, even in the remotest degree, what is called a closet scholar. Unfortunately we have before us only the lesser half of the account which he sent his father of this autumn journey to Strasburg and his sojourn there. This, however, is sufficient to show with what vigilance he seized on everything that was noteworthy, what a keen appreciation he had acquired, under the tuition of O. Miiller, for art and .all that is classed under the head of relics of antiquity, and how indefatigably he searched the libraries for their stores of knowledge. Wherever he went, too, he considered it especially GOTTINGEN. 39 desirable to make the acquaintance of eminent men, and to establish relations with them. Of books, characteristically enough, he took none with him but Muller's Handbook of Archaeology and Ewald's work on Sanscrit. He was an active pedestrian, but the hard work of the last term was visible on his originally robust physique, for after he had claimed at Mainz the hospitality of a cousin of his father's the latter wrote to the president of the court at Naumburg : " Moreover, I cannot conceal from you that friend Richard looks thinner now than he did three years ago.* His pedestrian tour from Gottingen here cannot be to blame, therefore I have made inquiries of H. Kreiss as to the cause of it,' and learned from him that he (Richard) is in the habit of studying far into the night. This never answers, and undermines the best constitution ; so warn him against it, for it would be a great pity if with all his talents and the learning which he has already acquired, he should carry away an infirm body." Lepsius fortunately escaped this danger, in spite of rather increased than diminished application during the final terms, which were devoted to the completion of his studies. The journey to Strasburg also took him through Heidelberg. Here he sought out those scholars who * When a pupil in the highest class, Richard had travelled on the Rhine with his father during the vacation, and visited Mainz at the same time. The charming description of this journey, which in print would fill quite a little volume, has been preserved in manu- script. 40 RICHARD LEPSIUS. had inspired him with interest, and described them to his father in concise and pointed language. Ex- cellent is the likeness which he sketched of Creuzer, the author of the " Symbolism and Mythology of Ancient Nations." This work was at that time highly esteemed, but was really inaccurate and worthless, in spite of the pains spent upon it, and an imaginative faculty which was unfortunately too easily excited. Not in vain had Lepsius enjoyed the teaching of the author of the " Prologomena to a Scientific Mythology " (O. Miiller). " Dr. Hitzig/' he writes, " we did not find at home. We found Creuzer, though, whom I had fancied quite a different sort of person ; he left an un- pleasant impression upon me, with his peruke and snuff-box. I could not discover a single intellectual trait in the expression of his countenance, nothing in his eye, which could have helped me to excuse his well-known presumptuous and mystifying treatment of mythology. I found in his character a certain frivolous pedantry, and far too much self-confidence. We talked of archaeology ; he put on great airs, without mani- festing much wisdom ; he found fault with O. Miiller's hand-book for having too much in it !" BERLIN. After his return from Strasburg, Lepsius went back to Gottingen, and in the spring of 1832 he removed thence to Berlin, there to conclude his studies. The BERLIN. 41 testimonials which he received at his departure did him the highest honor. Otfned Miiller said, that he had attended his lectures with remarkable diligence, and an unmistakable love for the subject ; that he had partici- pated with " philological intelligence and talent " in the exercises of the school of philology, and had, in gen- eral, given to that subject " arduous study, guided by scientific ideas." Jacob Grimm commended him as having gained a comprehensive survey of philology, and already acquired much well-grounded knowledge of that science. Ewald said he had followed his lectures with praiseworthy diligence and zeal, and had made great progress in the study of Sanscrit. Dahl- mann praised his industry warmly, and added that Lepsius had also become known to him as making most laudable progress on the path of scientific and moral culture. With such testimonials, and thus excellently equip- ped, he came to Berlin in the beginning of May, 1832. Here he had the pleasure of again meeting his friends and fellow-students of Gottingen — Kreiss and Ehr- hardt. The three now clubbed together to keep house. At first he gave but qualified approval to the leaders of philological life in Berlin, Boeckh and Lachmann, and even to Bopp. With the latter, however, in the course of time he entered into closer relations, and afterwards, in our own presence, called him the founder of his linguistic method. He had been spoiled at Gottingen by Miiller, Dahlmann and Heeren, who united the most brilliant eloquence to profound and 42 RICHARD LEPSIUS. far-seeing intellects. His reverence for the immortal achievements of Boeckh had been shaken, first in Leipsic by Hermann, who was always glad to give a cut at his Berlin colleagues in his lectures,* and after- wards by Dissen. Later, he entirely regained his respect for the great erudition, the sound criticism, the statesmanlike views, the excellent method, and the noble character of this rare scholar and man. Even Schleiermacher did not fully answer his expectations. He only attended the lectures on the History of Ger- man Literature because Lachman was dreaded as an examiner in this branch of study, and it was said that he was accustomed to " chaff" those students who were not well prepared. " He reads very disagreeably, but he gives good things, and fortunately I had pre- viously formed a still worse idea of him — from the description of others." He attended the lectures on the History of Greek Literature by Boeckh, " and because one really misses the best less among bad than among good, I miss our Otfried M tiller especially in this course. For I am firmly convinced that Boeckh, although his teacher, does not by any means approach him. Yet they are, as they are reputed to be, good lectures. In the afternoons from four to five I hear Comparative Grammar by Bopp, a lifeless, dull dis- * In a letter of Samuel Hirzel's to Horner, the former gives most lively expression to his delight in the lectures of G. Hermann, and afterwards says : "Then he Degan inveighing against Buttmann without ceremony.'' A. Springer, The Young Hirztl, Leipzig, 1883. It is well known what a harsh attack Hermann Boeckh could make in the presence of his class. BERLIN. 43 course, in which the arrangement of the material is never clear and workmanlike. In many fundamental views however, on the formation of the main stem, I have always been much more of his than of Grimm's or Miiller's opinion, and on this account he interests me greatly, although Miiller's lectures on the History of the Greek and Latin languages were infinitely more copious and satisfactory than these can ever be. But in his own house Bopp is an agreeable man, by whose vast and profound learning I hope to benefit farther." This Lepsius did, and to his great advantage, for at that time Bopp, whose lectures were indeed lifeless and tiresome (we too were among his pupils), was at the acme of his great activity, and had raised compara- tive philology to the rank of a science. We should rather call him the promoter than, as is commonly done, the father of this branch of study, which had indeed an existence, although an irregular one, before his time. His method, which was determinative for subsequent works in the same field, set aside, as idle pastime, the attractive search for and comparison of accidental resemblances between the sounds in different languages, and taught that the common origin of allied idioms should be sought for in a radical manner by examina- tion of their grammatical construction. When Lepsius came to Berlin, Bopp was working with his whole energy on his imperishable colossal work, the " Comparative Grammar," and exercised far greater influence over such well-equipped young scholars as sought personal acquaintance with him, 44 RICHARD LEPSIUS. than through his stiff academic discourses. Lepsius first learned to thoroughly appreciate him and to benefit by his exuberant learning after he had entered into intimate private relations with the master, to whom, as far as comparative philology is concerned, young Lepsius' teacher at Gottingen was also greatly indebted. From his letters to his father it appears that it was chiefly the lack of that method of exposition to which he had become accustomed in (jrottingen, and which was in every respect consummate, that led Richard more than once to undervalue the Berlin professors, and even the excellent Boeckh. He attended Schleier- macher's lectures on the " Life of Jesus," in order to have heard at least one theological course, and to learn to know the man. But these lectures too, although for other reasons, found little favor with him. " Schlei- ermacher," he writes, " gives in his Life of Jesus noth- ing but negative dialectics, and to me he is a living contradiction from beginning to end." He speaks most unfavorably of the school of phil- ology as it existed at that time in Berlin, under the management of Boeckh and Lachmann. " A frightful confusion is the order of the day here, and it is scarcely to be compared with that at Gottingen. So that it would not have occurred to me to enter, if in spite of all this they did not think so highly of it here. They translate Herodotus (in my opinion a very unsuitable choice for such a school), and the odes of Horace, and hold discussions over papers which are handed in, and difficult passages which are propounded." BERLIN. 45 In truth the lectures had little more to offer him, for he already stood firmly upon his own feet, and had learned both how to avail himself of the works of his instructors and to labor independently in an assured and methodic manner. Besides, his time was much taken up with his dissertation for the doctor's degree. He had found for this a theme as interesting as it was difficult, and we may be permitted to point out how he came to select it, and to whom he was indebted for special assistance in the execution of his task. First let it be noted that the famous Eugubian Tablets are seven plates of copper, which were found in 1444 in a subterranean vault {concameratio sub- terranea), and are now preserved in the town hall of Gubbio (the Eugnbium or jguvium of the ancients). The inscriptions with which the tablets are covered are partly based upon the Umbrian and partly On the Latin language. Where the latter is employed as the lan- guage of the text Latin letters are used, but otherwise the letters of a peculiar alphabet. These inscriptions are the oldest of all ancient Italian monuments of lan- guage, and with their help it has become possible to reproduce a good part of the old Umbrian language. Their contents furnish important disclosures as to the forms of worship and the sacrificial customs of the heathen Umbrians. The liturgical fragments make us acquainted with the hymns and liturgies which were to be recited or sung by the priests. The Saturnian metre and many alliterations have been found again in them. The old dialect which forms the basis of the Umbrian 46 RICHARD LEPSIUS. inscriptions seems to belong to the fourth century before Christ. Bonarota and Lanzi (1789) had given their atten- tion to these tablets, and they were afterwards treated by O. Miiller in his " Etruscans," and there for the first time handled in a critical though by no means exhaust- ive manner. On the 30th of December, 1831, Lepsius, while yet at Gottingen, writes to his father : " I have found an excellent subject for investigation. Miiller first drew my attention to it, and if I can make any- thing out of it I will perhaps choose it for my doctor's dissertation. It is the seven Eugubian Tablets, the sole but important relic of the Umbrian language. So far, no one understands them, but they would be of the greatest consequence for the old Italian forms of wor- ship and sacrificial customs, since it is easy to conject- ure that the inscriptions upon them are sacrificial formulas. Miiller has already attempted to determine the terminations of some of the declensions in his " Etruscans ;" a considerable resemblance to the Latin and also to the Greek, is unmistakable, and I am con- vinced that a great deal can yet be made out, though it would cost much time and labor. With regard to this, it is of great moment that five of the tablets are in Etruscan characters, and two in Latin, which gives a clue to the relations of many of the sounds in Umbrian, especially since there are an extraordinary number of repititions, and both the Latin tablets, as I have already discovered, are only the farther continuation of an Etruscan, so that I have already made out almost all BERLIN. 47 the words of this Etruscan tablet on those in Latin, and written them over the Latin words. I have also already discovered two new alphabetical characters which were known neither to Miiller nor the earlier commentators on the " Eugubian Tablets." Thereupon he gives his father a specimen, in which he writes the Latin text in black ink and the Etruscan above it in red. While in Berlin he became more and more deeply absorbed in the Eugubian Tablets, and from the letters at our disposal it appears that even before going there he had decided positively to discuss these remarkable monuments of language in his doctor's dissertation. A few days after his arrival on the Spree he appeals to the legal knowledge of his father and his familiarity with the form of mediaeval contracts, to decide a ques- tion which seems to him of importance for the work on which he is engaged. In the town hall at Gubbio there was preserved a contract of sale of the year 1456 which set forth that the city had acquired seven tablets from the owner, at a high price. Since the contract was concluded only twelve years after the discovery, it seemed to follow that no more than seven tablets had been discovered; and as Lepsius now believed that more than seven tablets had been originally found, he took the contract for one of those counterfeits which were not uncommon in Italy. He now wished to know whether any marks of a counterfeit could be detected in the form, and on this account sent a copy of the contract to his father. 48 RICHARD LEPSIUS. Amongst the professors of his faculty there was none whose advice Lepsius wished to ask in this mat- ter, but he received welcome assistance from a lawyer. This was C. A. K. Klenze, an unusually talented scholar and noble philanthropist who, besides import- ant works on law, had also written those excellent phil- ological " Dissertations," which were afterwards pub- lished by Lachmann. Lepsius had already made the acquaintance of Klenze in Gottingen, he sought him out in Berlin, and could soon write to his father: " He handles Oscan subjects as I do Umbrian. The two are nearly related, and he has had the courtesy to let me see in manuscript a treatise which is shortly to appear in print, and to allow me to make use of as much of it as I think best. In return I am to give him my opinion of his work, which is very flattering for me." The arrival in Berlin of the distinguished archaeolo- gist, Gerhard, at that time Secretary of the great Archaeological Institute at Rome, was of great advan- tage to Lepsius, not only with regard to the progress of his dissertation, but also in many other respects. He met Richard's friend, Kreiss, at Professor Steffens', and told him that on his (Gerhard's) way through Gottin- gen, Otfried Miiller had spoken to him of the Eugubian work of a very promising young scholar, to whom he would gladly be of service. In consequence of this Lepsius called on him, " and he," so Richard writes to Naumburg, " kindly gave me much interesting informa- tion, showed me his drawings, and promised to attend to any inquiries that I might wish to have made in BERLIN. 49 Gubbio. Of these there were of course plenty. I wrote them all out in Latin on a sheet of paper, and as soon as I brought it to him he sent it to Vermiglioli in Peru- gia, which is only a few hours distant from Gubbio. I may have an answer in six weeks. But if they take an entire new transcript of the tables, which I asked for afterwards, it cannot be so soon." The further intercourse which he at this time en- joyed with Gerhard was afterwards to prove most use- ful to him. But he could not yet know how favorable it was also to be for his material prosperity, when he wrote after a three hours visit to the celebrated archae- ologist, just before the examination, " Truly very precious time just now, and yet well spent." In the middle of January, 1833, Gerhard invited him to assist him in the publication and exposition of his copious collections for the Archaeological Institute. He also engaged him as assistant on a review concerning the history of art which he intended to publish in Germany. Lepsius' work was to consist mainly in reading over the epigraphic department of archaeology, and selecting what was noteworthy, which he would have done at any rate on his own account. He was to put it in readable shape, and let himself be paid. This prospect of lucra- tive literary employment after the close of the examin- ation delighted Lepsius as much as did the invitation to write short papers for the Bidletino of the Institute, chiefly on Umbrian coins and mythological subjects, which he could consider as a side-work to the more important work on the Eugubian Tablets. 4 50 RICHARD LEPSIUS. What Lepsius showed Gerhard of his dissertation * pleased the latter exceedingly, and after it was finally completed and handed in to the Faculty it was received by that body also with such commendation and unquali- fied approval that it won for the candidate the highest testimonial. This work, as solid as it is ingenious, is dedicated to his father, and it soon contributed, more than anything else, to attract the attention of eminent men to the son, and prove him qualified to continue the labors of the great decipherer of hieroglyphics, Cham- pollion. In the prescribed disputation his opponents were the dr. jur. Goeschen, the dr. phil. Kaempf, and the cand. phil. Gottheiner. In his eleventh thesis, he honored Godfrey Hermann, his old teacher at Leipsic, by maintaining that his was the only correct interpreta- tion of the three hundred and fifty-seventh verse of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus.** On the twenty-third of April his uncle Glaeser wrote to his father, " To make up for these cares (con- cerning the practical matters of the graduation) I have had the greatest pleasure, one of the most delightful moments of my life, when, after two o'clock, my Richard came home accompanied by one of his friends and opponents, and I could greet him as Doctor, and embrace him with the happiest emotions. We sat * De Tabulis Eugubinis. Dissert. Berolini. 1833. (Index to Works. No. 1.) ** Aeschyl. Agam. VS. 357: noWuv >ap «J»" Hermanni interpretationem unam esse rectam. etiamsi librorum lectio retineatur. THE JOURNEYxMAN. 5 I down together and drank a bottle of the very best. Yesterday evening I gave him his doctor's banquet, and we were all as merry as possible together till two o'clock. Believe me truly, my dearest brother, if Richard, in addition to his scientific training, had not this practical savoir /aire, he would never have made his way so easily and quickly through this wilderness of cares of all sorts." Lepsius had now completed his life as a student, and with the highest honors which the greatest of the German universities could bestow. He was a sound philologist, archaeologist, Sanscrit scholar and linguist, but at no time had he given any thorough study to the Oriental-Semitic languages, and he had paid no atten- tion whatever to the Hamitic (ancient Egyptian, Cop- tic, etc). His neglect of the former was often after- wards an embarrassment and matter of regret to him ; of the latter he became an expert master after the formal completion of his studies, in consequence of notable circumstances with which we are about to become ac- quainted. THE JOURNEYMAN. PARIS. Before the close of the examination Richard had already written admirable letters to his father, in which he consulted with him, as one friend would with an- other, as to what he should do after graduating. Paris 52 RICHARD LEPSIUS. was at that time still esteemed the centre of learning, and to work for a time in Paris was to give one's studies the final polish and to place the crown upon them. Even Lepsius had yet much to gain there, and therefore we see the father grant his consent that the young doctor should bring his apprenticeship to a final close upon the Seine. He arrived in Paris on the fourteenth of July, 1833, a year after the death of Champollion, the first de- cipherer of hieroglyphics. The diary which he kept during his residence there, (in after years he only made occasional short notes in memorandum books arranged as calendars), as well as the letters to Bunsen which were kept to the very last fragment, and the less per- fectly preserved letters to his father, all testify to the zeal, the discretion, the cheerful courage, and the alert attention with which he made use of his long sojourn in what was then the " focus of the intellectual life of the world." The period spent in Paris had a still more decisive influence upon him than that at Gottingen. During this time the youth matured into a settled man; his scientific inclination received a new bias, and its ob- jects became plainly defined. Champollion had said, in his introductory lecture, that the science of archaeology was a beautiful maiden without a dower. This aphorism was at that time en- tirely appropriate, yet not only the young scholar him- self, but his father also, knew the wonderful charms of the bride, and every possible exertion was made by THE JOURNEYMAN. 53 both, to win her for the ardent wooer. The " court president " in Naumburg was an official of the higher class, in good standing, with moderate property, and many children, nevertheless he allowed his highly gifted son the necessary means with which to remain for a time in Paris and devote himself, free from care, to his scientific education. But the young in- vestigator felt that he would not have attained his purpose at the end of the "several months" which his father had originally contemplated. He did not wish to leave France or its capital, until he had gained all that was there to be won, and especially (this he insists upon repeatedly), not until he had ac- quired perfect command of the French language. In order to earn the necessary means for a longer stay he at first thought of translating into French his vademe- cum, Otfried M tiller's Handbook of Archaeology, which, to him, was such a dear and familiar friend. But this undertaking was not carried out, and he began by giving German lessons to two renowned scholars. From one of them, Dureau de la Malle, membre de V 'Institute, whom he calls a specimen of a dissipated, frivolous Frenchman, he received five francs an hour, from the excellent De Witte only four. " He learns more for his four francs than the other for his five." Meanwhile the desired opportunity soon presented itself for earning in a suitable manner the necessary addition to the yearly allowance from his father. The learned Due de Luynes, "such a duke as is seldom seen, a avr, P kuAo? *iyat>b? in the fullest sense, who is also well-versed in the classi- 54 RICHARD LEPSIUS. cal languages," commissioned Lepsius to collect for him from the Greek and Latin authors the material which he needed for his archaeological-philological work. " On the Weapons of the Ancients." Lepsius received a handsome monthly salary for this work, which he could easily manage in addition to his other studies, and he executed it so entirely to the satisfaction of the duke that the latter afterwards awarded him special re- muneration. Lepsius was now in such a position that he could conveniently, and without material anxieties, profit by all that Paris offered in the way of instruction, and at the same time participate in all the intellectual pleasures of life in the capital. We see him working indefatiga- bly in his pleasant apartment, and in his leisure hours enjoying the society of his friends and playing on his own good piano. He was very musical and sang well and correctly. The public libraries and museums are at his disposal, and he makes diligent use of them ; private collections are also opened to him, and he at- tends the lectures of the most eminent professors at the university. Those of the great philologist and archae- ologist, Letronne, appear to him particularly attractive, and among them one especially " On the Ancient His- tory of Egypt." He praises these lectures for their great critical acumen and clearness, and declares that Letronne takes pleasure in contradicting everything not capable of proof, and in denying all earlier influence of Egypt upon Greece, (before Psammetik. Twenty-Sixth Dynasty.) Letronne only accepted what was indisputa- THE JOURNEYMAN. 55 ble of Champollion's discoveries, and it was he who especially roused and fostered in Lepsius the distrust which he too bore towards the great investigator, and which caused him to hesitate about entertaining Bun- sen's proposition that he should devote himself to Egyptology. Alexander von Humboldt, with whom he had be- come acquainted in Berlin, had commended him warmly to the celebrated philologist, Hase, and from him and others he had received excellent introductions. He was highly esteemed also by the members of the Institute, on account of his admirable first work. Thus he was enabled to make the acquaintance of the great- est Orientalists, philologists and archaeologists of France, and was most cordially received by Silvestre de Sacy, Quatre-Mere de Quincy, Raynouard, Raoul- Rochette, the Due de Luynes, etc. He became inti- mate with Panofka, and the learned Stahl, secretary of the Asiatic Society, invited him to drink German beer in his apartment. This man he calls " a paragon of the learning of the whole world." " He may be called greedy in regard to time and knowledge. He sleeps seven hours, cooks his dinner, — a little rice, — himself, spends almost no time at all on all the externals of life, such as eating, dressing, shav- ing, visiting, etc., and all the moments thus gained he spends in study. He knows a host of Asiatic languages, Chinese among others, and almost all the European, is incredibly conversant with the his- tory and geography of all countries and times, as well 56 RICHARD LEPSIUS. as with all literatures, swims and fences very well, is a sturdy pedestrian, conducts the whole Asiatic corres- pondence, etc." Yet, " this phenomenon of learning " had been in nowise distinguished at school, and had usually occupied the lowest places there. A genius he cannot call him, for his power of original production has suffered from his erudition, and with all his attain- ments he has never written any complete work. But Lepsius understood how to learn from him, and ob- tained through him an insight into the construction of Chinese. Stahl's opinion, that among the Chinese as also among several uncivilized nations, intellectual con- ceptions were developed before sensuous, seems to Lepsius entirely contrary to reason ; and he only ap- prehends from this that we have become acquainted with the intellectual culture of the Chinese at a very late, and consequently intellectually abstract, period. He seeks to profit by the learning of other Parisian scholars, as well as by Stahl's surpassing erudition. Amongst the noted Germans with whom he associated on the Seine, he names Wagen, the historian of art from Berlin, Miintz, Himly, Urlichs, the painter Bon- terweck, Tix, Diibner, Stickel, Spach, the Alsatian Lobstein, and the historian Zinkeisen. He also devoted many precious hours to learning engraving on copper and lithography. He used his first independent attempt in the art of engraving on copper, (the central portion of the plan of Paris), to adorn the sheets of letter paper on which he wrote home to his family, and on this neat engraving he THE JOURNEYMAN. 57 marked in fine writing the houses which he most fre- quented, the museum of the Louvre, the Library, the Institute, the two restaurants where he usually took his meals, and even the dwellings of Panofka, Miintz, and Count de Bouge, between whose wife and himself a charming friendship existed, and whose salon he often visited on Sunday. As if he already foresaw at that time to what an ex- tent he would afterwards have to call upon these repro- ductive arts for his scientific work, he wrote, after taking home with him the first lithographic stone for the purpose of drawing upon it : " There are many ad- vantages in investigating the technique of every promi- nent branch of art and science, even if I do not need to make use of lithography later for my own inscrip- tions." But this he did, and if the publications which were prepared for him by this method of reduplication sur- pass all others in neatness and beauty, it should be credited to the score of the technical knowledge which he acquired in Paris. There, also, he committed to paper his first musical compositions. A song, written by himself, which he set to music with an accompaniment, was followed by others, for at that time he everywhere kept up his pro- ficiency in this art, and particularly while in Paris. Not only the antiquarian collections, but also the exhibitions of new paintings and statuary were constantly visited, and, no less frequently, the theatre. His diary shows with what quick sympathy and keen judgment he lis- 58 RICHARD LEPSIUS. tened to tragedies, comedies, and opera. The repre- sentation of French tragedy is most severely censured. " The performance of Corneille's Cid was bad beyond measure, and fearfully French. . . . The players of to-day, who act Corneille and Racine, have preserved nothing of the tragic art but the tragic mask, and this they fasten on behind instead of in front, so as not to hide their lovely French faces." The only one who compelled his unlimited admiration was Mars, who, as an old woman of sixty-eight, at that time filled the most youthful roles with admirable sweetness and naivete. Montrose and Mademoiselle Dupont he also rates very highly. He bestows the warmest enco- miums on the Cirque Olyi7ipique, conducted by Loiset. " Here is actual art, not only feats of skill. Painters and sculptors should come here to study, as Phidias and the Grecian sculptors did in their gymnasiums. Superb figures are displayed here, and strength, dex- terity, freedom and ease are combined with real beauty of form, such as one vainly seeks in the ballet. Our ballet has almost lost rank as an art ; the sole laudable exception is Taglioni, whom I have seen here in the Sylphide, and admired, as I did in Berlin. If any one wished to fashion a worthy statue of Terpsichore it might perhaps be possible from Noblet, Foncisy and all the rest of them, to construct a passable pair of legs : it would only be necessary to take a cast of Tag- lioni, and there you would have it in perfection." All that is beautiful and remarkable in Paris passes under the vigilant eye of this indefatigable scholar. He THE JOURNEYMAN. 59 is active as collector, student and investigator, and dur- ing the latter part of the time in a department of science which had till then been as good as unknown to him. But he is also busy with both hands and brain in earning meat to go with his bread, and in pro- ducing a new and difficult original work. We see him attend public festivals, ride out into the country, exam- ine every corner of the city, give his attention to the industries of the Parisians, go to parties and salons as a welcome guest, sing and play with friends, and through all this we can trace the progress of an essay on Sanscrit palaeography from which was afterwards developed the excellent treatise on " Palaeography as a Means of Etymological Research.* For this, — an al- most unheard-of honor, — the youth of three and twenty receives the Volney prize. He says, at a later period, that Paris was always to him a city rich in interest, instruction and manifold benefits. During his first sojourn there it appeared to him " in one respect " (undoubtedly in respect to the animation and refinement of social life,) " the capital of the world." But in spite of his youth Lepsius in no wise allowed himself to be dazzled by the glittering as- pects of French life. It was in the public libraries that he first became sensible of the drawbacks in the con- ditions of the Parisians. " The management of the libraries is abominable," he writes, " no zeal, no knowl- edge, not even good-will. Miserable officials, lack of * Berlin 1834. Second Edition. Leipsic 1842. (Index to Works. No. III.) 6o RICHARD LEPSIUS. everything that is not French. It is true that I am spoiled by the Gottingen and Berlin libraries, etc." Since that time many improvements have been made in these institutions. The special attention given to them by Lepsius was of use to him as " Chief Li- brarian," in the evening of his life. From the first he had devoted himself with great ardor to the study of the French language. But, al- though he was pleased with his progress, he did not allow himself to be blinded in this regard either, and, after he had spent four months in the cultivation of his French style, he wrote, " A Frenchman only needs to think correctly and truly, and he is sure to write properly and well ; in German a good style is far more difficult, for there one must know all the deeps and shallows not to steer crookedly or clumsily, or even run aground. The French language is a level surface, and one slips along as if skating on ice ; the German lan- guage has depths over which it is more dangerous and requires more skill to steer, but one can go farther on it. When water is deep and moves rapidly it never freezes, and neither does the boundless sea. So the German with his language can make the whole world his own ; the Frenchman is restricted to his mirror-like surface. One must cherish one's hatred against everything French not to lose one's own depth. As soon as one takes pleasure in French things one's spirit rests on enervating down feathers. Yet one should always learn, even from one's enemies. Lepsius took the most lively interest in every event THE JOURNEYMAN. 6 1 of importance that occurred during the time of his so- journ in Paris. He devotes a large space in his diary to the great popular festival, celebrated on the anniver- sary of the Revolution, from the twenty-seventh to the twenty-ninth of July, 1843, and to the unveiling of the statue of Napoleon on the Vendome column. This took place on the second day of the grand festival. The statue was enveloped in a green cloth, besprinkled with stars. " The impression made by the unveiling," he writes, (and we gladly make room here for the ac- count, both for its own sake and as a specimen of the German style of young Lepsius,) " the impression, es- pecially amidst these surroundings, was very striking. Above this seething mass, these convulsions of a strug- gling mob y this shouting and quarrelling, this motley throng, this glittering of military display, there suddenly appeared, not like a rock in the sea, (to which possibly the column might have been compared,) but like a supernatural power, the calm, majestic presence of Napoleon. What can produce a greater impression than the power of a mind which manifests itself in a composed bearing and a commanding expression, face to face with the unruly passions of similar human spirits ?" In these words he presents to us the ideal, of his life, and we shall see how well he himself ever succeeded in preserving such a commanding attitude towards unruly passions. " This expression of command," he con- tinues, "is still grander than the great yet inanimate nature, which is sometimes admired in contrast with 62 RICHARD LEPSIUS. nature, or even humanity, in a state of excitement. A like impression, too, was unconsciously depicted on every face, and a general shout, ' Vie l'Empereur! Vive Napoleon !' burst from the innumerable throng, which really seemed for a moment entirely to forget the op- pressive present. For one moment every lineament expressed admiration, pleasure, satisfaction." Then he describes how Louis Philippe conducted the review, and continues, " However, not the least enthusiasm was manifested for him, which, in my opinion, is mainly owing to his personality. His external appearance presents nothing that is at all imposing, nothing attrac- tive; no intellectual power of any sort is expressed in his figure or his face; he impresses you as a stout citizen, returning thanks for the great honor which is done him. And yet here in France, if anywhere, at least a semblance of intrinsic greatness is needed for the eyes of the people, since the mystic vail of royal greatness has so entirely fallen from the head of the citizen king. As the king rode past one only heard a clamor, such as springs from gratified curiosity." From this festival, as Lepsius describes it, can be infer- red the historical events which must of necessity occur later : the expulsion of Louis Philippe and the acclama- tion of a Napoleon to the French throne. With the appearance of the citizen king Lepsius' exalted frame of mind is dissipated, and he tries to fix the note which he can designate as prevalent in the general din. With the aid of the interval between the lowest note of his own voice and the sound which THE JOURNEYMAN. 6$ formed the key-note of the clamor, he found it to be the treble e. Thus does the spirit of research ever demand her due of him. The linguist everywhere scrutinizes the value and significance of sounds and tones. He does not disdain to amuse himself with them occasionally, and to determine the relation be- tween them and other perceptions of the senses. " O," he writes at one time in his diary, " seems to me brown, a, light blue, e, colorless, a clear faint color, i, bright yellow." At that time, while writing his essay on Sanscrit palaeography, he thought he discerned that in all languages the vowels had formed themselves by degrees, like colors, from the a, but that originally there had been no distinction between vowels and conso- nants. The words, he thought, had been divided ac- cording to their sounds, in such a way that each conso- nant with the vowel which followed it constituted an inseparable whole. Hence in Sanscrit a originally was even considered as a consonant, or rather as a combi- nation of the Greek Spiritus lenis and the a which necessarily followed it. In Paris Lepsius is at first a linguist solely, and does not concern himself with Egyptological studies. But by the end of October, through Panofka, he is first invited to come to Italy in the name of Gerhard, who had kept him in mind since their meeting in Berlin, and then he receives a letter from the Alsatian Lobstein, who had met him in Paris, and who has been author- ized by Bunsen and also by Kellermann to make him a serious proposition to come to Rome. There he is first 64 RICHARD LEPSIUS. to busy himself with a collection of Umbrian, Oscan, and Etruscan inscriptions, for which his dissertation would seem especially to qualify him, and secondly to de- vote himself seriously to the study of the writing and language of the ancient Egyptians. The first proposal is entirely acceptable to him from the beginning, although it is only for the sake of completeness that he will in- clude in his corpus inscriptionem the Etruscan inscrip- tions, on the deciphering of which " many a man may yet wear out his teeth." The second proposition, on the contrary, causes him the most serious deliberation. It is true that Gerhard, through whom he had been most warmly commended to Bunsen, had already in Berlin urged him to the study of hieroglyphics, and had assured him that he should himself undertake it if he were but younger. It is also true that he felt his own powers had now become fit to cope with the greatest difficulties, but yet it seemed to him advisable to await the appearance of Champollion's grammar, in order to learn how the matter actually stood. He could thence gather and decide whether the foundations had been so well laid that by rational and scientific investigation he should really be able to accomplish something substan- tial on a field which, with the exception of Champollion himself, had up to that time been almost exclusively occupied by bunglers and incompetent dilettanti. The prudence with which the youth of three and twenty proceeded in this important question of his life, is most remarkable. In the letters which he addressed to his father, in order to obtain his advice, he sefs forth THE JOURNEYMAN. 65 clearly and exhaustively all the reasons on both sides. Bunsen, from whom these proposals emanate, is a per- son of great influence, and if he, Lepsius, finds Cham- pollion's preparatory work satisfactory, and it is possible to realize his patron's plan of finally entrusting him with the direction of the fine Egyptian collection at Berlin, there then opens before him the prospect of an assured future, as far as the material circumstances of life are concerned. This it is usually far more difficult for an archaeologist and philologist to secure than for a gram- marian and teacher. He would not be content, he writes, to gain his livelihood by book-writing. He had already written to his father from Berlin, March thir- teenth, 1833, " I do not know whether I should have any special talent for the profession of teaching, since I have never yet tried it, and even if I should adopt it, from inclination, and with the expectation of finding content- ment in it, yet, in truth, it is not a great career." If he can hope, (thus he continues to write to his father, after Bunsens invitation,) to find in Egyptology a satisfac- tory field for research, and if Bunsen can give him in advance the most positive prospect of the patronage of the Prussian government, and the hope of afterwards obtaining an appointment in the fine Egyptian collec- tion at Berlin, then he will decide to go to Rome, and to turn his studies in the new direction which Bunsen desires ; but otherwise not. His father could only assent to his doubts and de- liberations, and so, on December twelfth, 1833, the son wrote to Bunsen the following letter, which was to give 5 66 RICHARD LEPSIUS. both to his studies and his life a tendency so peculiarly propitious for his character and talents. " The kind confidence which, judging by an invita- tion lately sent me through H. Lobstein, you appear to feel in my abilities, has aroused in me no less pleasure than serious doubts as to how far I may myself confide in my own powers. I in no wise mistake the import- ance of these doubts, especially at my age and in my circumstances. How I shall solve the problem of life depends chiefly on their right or wrong solution, and therefore, as long as they are still unsettled, every im- pulse from without is of infinite moment to the whole inner life and aspiration. You could neither be aware of the soil on which your words, perhaps but carelessly meant, had fallen, nor still less of the connection in which they stand with my bwn inclinations and mental tendency. It is not as if I had previously entertained the idea of attempting the deciphering of hieroglyphics ; rather, till now, I have been chiefly attracted towards archaeology and general comparative philology, upon the broader field of that science to which, in any case I had resolved to devote myself. Although these did not give me much prospect of an assured livelihood for the future, yet I wished to prosecute the two studies together in Paris, because they have so many points in com- mon, and indeed seem to me in their essential substance to form a more perfect whole. Then latterly I was led by chance to a subject which attracted me more the farther I pursued it, and at last prompted me to collect the results in a short treatise which I am about to have THE JOURNEYMAN. 67 published in Berlin. This treatise is immediately con- cerned with palaeographic researches into Sanscrit writing, but I was soon led from the peculiarities of this writing, which in many respects is wonderfully conson- ant with nature, to more universal palaeographic laws. I found myself forced at last, by the subject itself, to express my views on the organic and essentially neces- sary connection between writing and language con- sidered in their broadest relation, and on the value of a scientific palaeography in the investigation of language. Indeed, I could not refrain, at the close, from referring to Egypt itself, where there seems to open such a splen- did and fertile field for this new science as never before in Europe, or even in Asia. Thus, on one hand, I am at- tracted by the idea of an Egyptian palaeography which cannot possibly be sought for except in accordance with the universal laws of writing and language, and therefore must be capable of rational scientific treat- ment. Yet, on the other hand, I cannot avoid noticing the special obstacles, of other than a scientific kind, which present themselves, and particularly the precari- ous direction which might be permanently given to my studies by an over-hasty decision. It is true that on this path also archaeology and comparative philology would be the guides and companions whom I should most desire. But in their Egyptian costume they would probably be still less able to secure me a settled posi- tion in life, than in their Greek and Roman dress, un- less, in that case, I might consider myself assured of substantial assistance from the government, and of a 68 RICHARD LEPSIUS. situation in the public service in case I succeeded in fulfilling all reasonable expectations. But if this were possible, and, above all, if I had become convinced by examination of the authorities hitherto accessible, and especially of Champollion's grammar, that the founda- tions had been so laid as to give hope of greater results to be attained by conscientious and scientific treatment, then I would gladly devote all my ability, time and energy to a subject, the advancement of which may rightly lay claim to the most universal interest, although the handling of it at present can only fall to the lot of a favored few." Bunsen sent an encouraging answer to this letter, which, like the diary and the letters to Father Lepsius, did not deviate by one hair's breadth from the true circumstances and inclination of the writer. After the young philologist and archaeologist had satisfied him- self that new researches might indeed be profitably based upon the preparatory work of Champollion, and that great results could perhaps be attained in the field of science thrown open by him, he decided thenceforth to devote himself with all his energy to the study of Egyptology. It is now time for us to cast a glance at this new science, and to point out how far it had progressed, at the time when Lepsius first commenced to devote him- self to it and to continue the labors of Champollion, who had died shortly before his arrival in Paris. EGYPTOLOGICAL STUDIES. 69 EGYPTOLOGICAL STUDIES, AS LEPSIUS FOUND THEM IN 1834. For nearly fifteen hundred years all direct knowl- edge of the hieroglyphic writing of the ancient Egyptians had been lost, and nothing more was known of the monuments of the time of the Pharaohs than was incidentally mentioned by classic authors, or travellers who had visited the Orient. It is true that in Rome and Constantinople stood obelisks which had been transported to the imperial residences from the temples of the Nile, while mummies and smaller Egyptian relics were preserved as curiosities in the libraries and mu- seums of Europe. But the interest in the life of the ancient Egyptians, as well as in their art and science, which had enjoyed such a high degree of esteem amongst the Greeks, had been lost. And although, after the prime of the humanities had faded, an Athan- asius Kircher,* and after him other scholars such as the Dane Zoega or Barthelemy, ventured to attempt the deciphering of the inscriptions with which the Roman obelisks were covered, yet they were soon forced to de- sist from their fruitless endeavors, for want of any fixed basis from which they might have prosecuted their difficult operations with success. Then the First Con- * Died in 1680. 70 RICHARD LEPSIUS. sul of the French Republic, General Napoleon Bona- parte, undertook that adventurous march into Egypt by which he hoped to break up English influence on African soil, to cut off the nearest route to India from the British armies, and -also to gather laurels for him- self. " For," he had said, " the greatest glory in the world is only to be won in the Orient." Every one knows the course of this campaign, which indeed ended in favor of England, but brought far greater fame to France than to her opponent. History does not forget such battles as that beneath the pyramids, and in the annals of science a place of honor will ever be accorded to the intellectual achievements of the French scholars who, during the end of the pre- vious and the beginning of our own century, followed the French armies amidst a thousand hardships, dan- gers, and adverse circumstances. It was by means of this expedition that the life of the old Egyptians was to celebrate its resurrection. No one in Europe had sus- pected what a wealth of monuments of the time of the Pharaohs had been preserved upon the Nile. People watched with astonishment the arrival in Paris of great folios full of superb drawings in which these were de- picted, and numerous volumes containing the descrip- tions of them. Excellent reproductions of both after- wards found their way all over the world. In 1799, m tne cou rse of excavations at the fort of St. Julienne at Rosetta, in the northern Delta, the French officer of engineers, Boussard, had found the remarkable tablet which was to become so famous EGYPTOLOGICAL STUDIES. 7 1 under the name of the Rosetta stone. The fortunes of war carried this one monument alone, not to Paris, but to London, where it is worthily conserved in the British Museum. It contains a sacerdotal decree, which awards high honors to the fifth Ptolemy, Epiphanes, for his great worth, and the benefits which he conferred on the country. It is written in three different characters and languages. Let us imagine, instead of the Egypt of that period, an Italian province of the Austrian monarchy, and let us suppose that the clergy of the place had drawn up a decree in honor of the imperial house ; this might per- haps be published in the old ecclesiastical language, Latin, in Italian, and in the German language of the ruling house and its officials. Precisely thus was the decree of Rosetta written ; first in the sacred language of the church, habitually rendered in the ancient hiero- glyphic character, and only employed in ecclesiastical writings, next in the dialect current among the people, the demotic, which was recorded in a special abbre- viated character in which the original form of the hiero- glyphics is no longer to be recognized, and finally in the Greek language and character of the Lagid ruling house and its functionaries. Thus the Rosetta stone offered for investigation three tolerably long texts, the first two of which had for foundation a dialect of the ancient Egyptian language. These were in the two kinds of writing, the distinction between which had al- ready been noted by the Greeks, (Herodotus, Diodorus, Clemens of Alexandria, etc.) and beneath them stood. 72 RICHARD LEPSIUS. the Greek translation. In a special treatise,* to which the reader is referred, we have endeavored to show how two scholars, working independently, arrived simultaneously at the same result of correctly decipher- ing the principal hieroglyphic groups by a comparison of the names of the Ptolemy, of Cleopatra and of Alex- ander,** which were distinguished by being enclosed within elliptical ovals (cartouches), and appeared on the bi-lingual tablet in both hieroglyphic and Greek text. These two scholars were the gifted Frenchman, Champollion, and the Englishman, Thomas Young, an investigator of the first rank, whom difficulties served only to allure, and whose labors in the domain of physiology and optics would have assured him an im- mortal name. But Young arrived at results which were inaccurate in detail, chiefly by means of mechani- cal and arithmetical comparison, and then pursued his acquisitions no further, while Champollion applied all the energies of his lifetime to the prosecution and de- velopment of his epoch-making discovery. For this reason we ascribe it to him more willingly and with greater justice than to Thomas Young, who, however, undoubtedly presented his conclusions a little in ad- vance of Champollion. Each had arrived at his results quite independently of the other, but, from the first, Champollion's were the more correct, and what with * G. Ebers. On the Hieroglyphic System of Writing. Virchow und V. Holtzendorff sche Samm'lung von wissenschaftlichen Vor- tragen. 2. Aufl. Serievi., No. 131. ** The names of both of these sovereigns were found upon a second bi-lingual tablet, discovered on the island of Philae. EGYPTOLOGICAL STUDIES. 73 Young remained a splendid but incomplete exploit of the most magnificent sagacity, was by the Frenchman prosecuted in the most brilliant manner, and reduced to a correct system which, taken as a whole, is still valid at the present day. The great master-pieces of Champollion, the Grammaire e'gyptie?ine, (1836-41), and the Diction?iaire egyptien en ecriture hieroglyphique, (1842-44), were first published after his death (1832), and subsequently to Lepsius' sojourn in Paris. They give an idea of the profound insight into the ancient Egyptian language which had been attained by this scholar who died so young. Had Fate granted him a longer life his great works would have gained im- mensely in value, for his brother, Champollion- Figeac, who had undertaken to edit a portion of the manuscripts* of the deceased, which filled two thou- sand pages, although he fulfilled the task conscien- tiously and gladly, was yet obliged to take in hand much that was only half completed, and did not prove entirely equal to the undertaking. It is true that Francois Champollion, in his Precis du systeme hieroglyphique des anciens Egyptietis, (Paris, 1824), had presented a scheme of the hieroglyphic system of writing which, in its general features, was correct. But this work, though extraordinary for that time, was somewhat of the nature of a sketch, and criticism could find in it sufficient grounds for enter- taining sundry doubts and scruples. Other scholars * They were bought by the Paris library for fifty thousand francs. 74 RICHARD LEPSIUS. especially, who likewise styled themselves Egyptolo- gists, attacked the system of Champollion, and brought forward other systems of their own in opposition to it. Amongst these guides to the labyrinth, whose errors have long since been refuted and lapsed into utter for- getfulness, Seyffarth of Leipsic lifted his voice most loudly. Sickler, also, wished to explain the hiero- glyphics by paranomasia. He maintained that each one was intended to represent a whole series of words of similar sound. Klaproth adhered firmly to his acro- logical system, according to which each hieroglyphic could express all those Coptic words that begin with the same sound with which the name of the hiero- glyphic begins. What was a critically trained linguist to think of a science which had not yet positively decided how to read or explain the characters of that writing, which it was incumbent upon it to interpret, and which could not even declare, with the concurrence of all its colla- borators, what language was the basis of the text which it nevertheless sought to translate and expound ? It is difficult to understand how, after the appear- ance of the Precis du systcme hieroglyphique, these card- houses could have stood their ground for a single month beside the well-founded edifice of Champollion. But the more dubious the condition of affairs was with the authors of these false systems, the louder did they raise their voices, while Champollion, without regarding them, worked on with admirable tranquillity, and added stone after stone to his great construction. The prin- EGYPTOLOGICAL STUDIES. 75 cipal parts of this he completed, but he was destined to bequeath it to posterity without roof or ornaments. At the time when Lepsius was invited to make the investigation of the ancient Egyptian the occupation of his life, he had heard as much in favor of SeyrTarth, Klaproth and Sickler as of Champollion. From the beginning he placed greater confidence in the latter. Yet he did well to inform himself exactly as to the true state of Egyptology at that time before placing at its disposal his energy, his ability, and his time. He was of too prudent a disposition to embark for the journey through life on a paper boat. A deeper insight into the system of Champollion re- assured him, and soon led him to a decision. He might undertake the work with favorable expectations, for Lepsius could feel himself far superior in thorough- ness of preparation and synthetic acumen to those in- tellectual imitators of the giant Champollion, who, even during his lifetime, had ventured forth with their own works. We shall have to tell with what blunt sickles they destroyed the grain which they thought to reap. Destiny had forbidden the master to train up worthy disciples, for after the first professorship of Egyptology in the University of Paris had been conferred upon him, and when he had scarcely entered on his office as a teacher, the fine vigorous man of forty-one was over- taken by death. Prior to this, however, he had already found dis- ciples in Salvolini and Rosellini. The latter had fol- lowed him to Rome, Turin and Naples, after having 76 RICHARD LEPSIUS. taught at Pisa as Professor of Oriental Languages. The extraordinary talent of E. de Rouge was developed later. Birch in London and Leemans in Leyden were indeed his contemporaries, but should be called his suc- cessors, not his pupils, and published their first Egyp- tological works after his death, and after Lepsius had decided in favor of this science. When our friend entered the arena of Egyptological research the nature of the demotic writing was as yet entirely undetermined, for although the greatest Orien- talist of this century, Silvestre de Sacy, had addressed his attention to the demotic portion of the Rosetta stone, and it had been examined not only by Thomas Young, but also by the sagacious Swede, Akerblad, neither they nor Champollion had been able to come to any satisfactory understanding of it. Lepsius, also did little towards a more thorough comprehension of the nature of the demotic dialect and writing. It was H. Brugsch and E. Revillout who first discovered the sig- nificance of the demotic, and proved the importance of this " writing and language of the people " as a middle term between ancient Egyptian and Coptic. As far as this, (the Coptic), is concerned, it was the language used by the Egyptians in speaking and writ- ing, after the introduction of Christianity into Egypt. It was written in Greek letters, with some additional alphabetical characters for sounds which the Hellenic alphabet would not reproduce. It represents the most recent dialect of the Egyptians, replete with many bor- rowed and alien words from the Greek, and it succeeded EGYPTOLOGICAL STUDIES. 77 the demotic as this sprang from the ancient Egyptian language which was written in hieroglyphics. As we possess many of the Scriptural books in Coptic transla- tions, and more recent Coptic manuscripts with an Arabic version in the margin, it is scarcely less intelli- gible for us than Greek and Arabic themselves. The church of the monophysitic Coptic Christians on the Nile employs it to-day in the liturgies according to which divine worship is conducted. The founder of a scientific knowledge of the Coptic language in Europe was the same Athanasius Kircher who attempted the deciphering of hieroglyphics without success. To him we are, however, indebted for the first Coptic vocabu- laries and essays at grammar, (these were taken from the Arabic, and written in Latin.) A succession of European scholars afterwards ex- tended and perfected his work, which, although funda- mental, was full of defects and errors. When Lepsius began the study of Coptic it had already been treated by Lacroze, Wilkins, Scholz, Woide, Tuki, Quatremere, and Zoega, in part grammatically, and in part lexico- graphically. Peyron's lexicon was also approaching completion. No one had yet ventured to assign this language its proper scientific philological rank. Its three dialects had long been known, and not only Champollion, but Seyffarth also, had made use of them in the interpreta- tion of the most ancient hieroglyphic words. There was no lack of Coptic manuscripts and 78 RICHARD LEPSIUS. books * in Paris, but there was a very obvious want of old Egyptian hieroglyphic writings, well published. The inscriptions** reproduced in the great Description de r£gypte, had been copied previous to the deciphering of hieroglyphics. They had been transcribed at ran- dom, without accuracy or intelligence, and were useless for the philologist. Rosellini's work on monuments t was prepared as the combined result of the expedition sent to Egypt by France, under Champolliori, and that sent by Tuscany under Rosellini. The publication of it had scarcely been commenced when Lepsius obeyed the summons of Bunsen. The same is true of Cham- pollion's Monuments de r£gypte, etc. In the following pages we shall have to show all that had been achieved by Egyptological research in the provinces of history and mythology, and what Lepsius found there, both to clear away, and to build up. * Lepsius used the Pentateuch, edited by Wilkins, for his first exercise book. ** Published in the first edition, under the supervision of Jomard, 1809-28. The second edition was edited by Pankouke, 1821-29. t In Rosellini's / Monumenti dell' Egitto e delta Nubia. Eight volumes, with the addition of two folio volumes of colored plates, published at Pisa in 1832-44. The third folio volume was published after his death. (1843) in 1844 ; Champollion's Monuments de I ' £gypte et de la Nubie, four folio volumes, with four hundred and forty plates, was published in Paris, 1835-47, and Lepsius thus had the use of the first numbers. Rosellini's work on monuments, mentioned above, is divided into historical and private monuments, and those pertaining to religious worship. Champollion had originally wished to treat of the former, but, in consequence of his early death, the publication of them fell to Rosellini. Champollion also saw only the first proofs of his own work on monuments. LEPSIUS IN PARIS AS AN EGYPTOLOGIST. 79 LEPSIUS IN PARIS AS AN EGYPTOLOGIST. From the very first Lepsius devoted himself with ardent zeal and indefatigable industry to Egyptological studies. Before us lie the letters which he addressed at that time to his new patron and subsequent friend, Bunsen. They show with what benevolent, indeed fatherly, sympathy, the famous scholar and statesman watched the progress of his protege in the field to which he had invited and introduced him ; what pains he took to smooth the way for him both by word and deed, and how perfect was the understanding with which he followed the scientific efforts and achieve- ments of the new Egyptologist. Bunsen also exerted himself to assure the pecuniary position of the young scholar ; but as the emperor above the senate, so did Alexander von Humboldt stand above Bunsen. Where the influence of the latter proved insufficient, and his good wishes could not be carried into effect, it became necessary to appeal to the power and benevolence of the man of world-wide fame, who was always ready for vigorous action when it was a question of furthering im- portant scientific endeavors, or helping promising and able young scholars. As Lepsius in the first place was in- finitely indebted to Bunsen, so was he in the second instance to A. von Humboldt. It is singular how many of the later German masters of science, besides our friend, were aided by this great and truly humane man 80 RICHARD LEPSIUS. as by a Providence. He removed obstacles from their path, built bridges for them, and opened to them por- tals which no other hand than his was in a position to unfold. From the letters to Bunsen we learn that Lepsius at first was absorbed in Coptic, and, as might have been expected, as a comparative philologist. At the begin- ning he was discouraged by the entire linguistic isola- tion in which this interesting idiom stood, but he soon thought to detect a certain fundamental relationship between it and the Indo-Germanic and Semitic families of languages. On the twentieth of January, 1835, he already invited Bunsen to consider with him, in a quite superficial and cursory manner, the affixes of the pro- nomen personale, in Coptic and Hebrew, and the rela- tionship of the two formations.* He next exerted himself to place before the public a specimen of Coptic grammar. He wished to begin by publishing a comparative division, which should be chiefly based upon the pronominal stems, and should establish the basis upon which the Coptic language had developed. It was further intended to show what posi- tion this should hold among the better known tongues. He had taken the bull by the horns, and was soon to find that little could be accomplished by giving promi- nence to such similarity in the terminal suffixes as struck the eye, or by the comparison of Indo-Germanic and * As an example he adduces the scheme : Hebrew, jam — m — i jam — nu jam — ka Coptic, jom— i jom— n join — k my sea our sea M. thy sea, etc. LEPSIUS IN PARIS AS AN EGYPTOLOGIST. 8l Semitic numeral words with the Egyptian, between which also many confonnities existed. As the first results of these new studies there ap- peared two papers on the alphabet and numerical words, which were submitted to the Berlin Academy in 1835, and were printed at the press of that learned in- stitution. The apothegm, that even the loftiest specu- lation only teaches us to comprehend what is already in existence, occurs in the first of these papers.* By means of this treatise the knowledge of the true principles of the most ancient alphabetical order was advanced by a long step, and what was new therein was combined with the most thorough regard for all that had been previously attained. In the second treatise** he considerably extended * On the Order and Relationship of the Semitic, Indian, Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian and Ethiopian Alphabets. Index of Works No. V. The history of the origin of this treatise is peculiar. At that time the Leipsic Egyptologist, Seyffarth, who, as we know, had ad- vanced a system of his own in opposition to that of Champollion, had brought out a publication which bore the strange title: "Our Alphabet a Representation of the Zodiac, with the Constellation of the Seven Planets, etc., etc. Probably according to the Observations of Noah himself. First Foundation of a True Chronology and His- tory of the Civilization of All Nations." Leipsic, 1834. — As this work appeared to emanate from some other than the critical world in which Lepsius had become eminent, and as, strange to say, it had found advocates of repute, the young doctor felt himself bound to refute it duly. So he wrote a critique of it for the " Berliner Jahr- bticher, — partly also with a view to "presenting himself gradually before the public in his Coptic costume." "I do not expect," he writes, "to demolish the work — by which no honor could be won, — but to give a true explanation of our alphabetical system." As the " Jahrbucher" had meantime made use of another review, he struck out the portion of the dissertation which was directed against Seyf- farth, from that in which he "built up," submitted this latter to the Berlin Academy, and had it printed in their Transactions. ** On the origin and relationship of the numerical words in the Coptic, Semitic, and Indo-Germanic Languages. Berlin, 1836. Index of Works, No. VI. 82 RICHARD LEPSIUS. previous investigations, and at the same time imposed upon himself voluntary restrictions which offer the most favorable testimony to his early acquired method and critical rigor. He would have been able to arrive at still more important results with the present knowl- edge of ancient Egyptian numerical words, and the numerical signs in hieratic and demotic. He never followed up " the manifest connection between the Semitic and the Egyptian-demotic alpha- bet " which he then thought to have discovered. We entertain no doubt that during his apprenticeship he took certain Parisian hieratic texts for demotic, and if this was the case, then at that time, with the intuition peculiar to him, he had already hit upon the truth which was established many decades later by de Rouge, Lenormant, and ourselves; namely, that the Semitic, and indeed, primarily, the Phoenician alphabet, must be traced back to the Egyptian hieratic. He also worked enthusiastically over the principles of sound in the Coptic. This language, which at first seemed to him quite " chaotic " on account of the " cumulative vowels " which it presents, became more attractive to him after he had learned, by com- parison of the manuscripts written in the different dialects to distinguish between them, and to penetrate more deeply into their wonderfully subtle syntactical construction. It was of great advantage to him in these studies that Peyron's Coptic Lexicon was pub- lished just at this time, and that he was able to procure each proof-sheet as it left the press. After he had LEPSIUS IN PARIS AS AN EGYPTOLOGIST. 83 obtained a good insight into the Coptic he ventured to attack the demotic and ancient Egyptian written in hieroglyphics. As, in the works then published on the ancient Egyptian language, deduction and hypothesis appeared far too much alike, he was extremely glad to receive the ready assistance of Salvolini, the disciple of Champollion mentioned above. This, very talented Italian, under the direction of the master, Champollion, had occupied himself with Egyptology exclusively for ten years, and Lepsius was able to inspire him with such interest that he wrote to Bunsen of the young scholar in the warmest terms. But after Lepsius was permitted to examine the literary legacy of Champol- lion he perceived that Salvolini had secretly made reckless use of another's labors, and that precisely those things which the younger Egyptologist had considered the most important discoveries of Salvolini, had been made, not by him, but by the master, Cham- pollion. Biot's book* on the vague year of the Egyptians, which had been published shortly before, led Lepsius also to the study of the calendar and chronology of the Egyptians, and prompted him to make Bunsen fully acquainted with his views on the year of Sirius and the Sothiac cycle. He sent the work mentioned to his patron, and in consequence of a request made by him, furnished him with everything that appeared in Paris in the way of new literary productions. Bunsen meanwhile was solicitous for the material * Biot, Rechcrches sur I' annee vague des Egyptiens, Paris, 1831. 84 RICHARD LEPSIUS. welfare of his protege^ and it is not a little to be ascribed to his and Gerhard's influence, — Boeckh too was a zealous advocate, — that the Academy of Sciences at Berlin awarded Lepsius five hundred thalers for his farther improvement in Egyptology, and that Gerhard, — although not officially, — could offer him the pros- pect of the same amount for a second year. Before this assistance had been promised him he had written to Bunsen : " It is easy to understand that there may be much opposition to furnishing aid for such a special object, as every one will not regard the importance of it in the same way but I am especially anxious because I have not yet been able to present to the Academy anything which could give me an ostensible claim to the assistance which I desire. On this account I have thought that it might be of advantage to my affairs if I should put in order and send to the Academy my treatise on numerical words and arithmetical figures. It seems to me that I have indisputably found the key to this interesting subject in the Egyptian figures and Coptic numeral words. If all this meets with your approval, I would first send this treatise to William von Humboldt, who is most interested in special investigations of this subject, and probably, also, in the method of treating it. The extremely friendly letter, and the favorable opinion (far beyond my expectations), which he sent me, when I forwarded to him my little pamphlet on Sanscrit paleography, have given me hopes of a kind reception from him." LEPSIUS IN PARIS AS AN EGYPTOLOGIST. 85 In fact, the treatise was despatched to Berlin, but when it arrived there William von Humboldt was no longer among the living, and it was with great difficulty that Lepsius was able to recover his manuscript. The Berlin Academy awarded him the sum mentioned with- out it, for they knew that the recipient was worthy, and that it would produce good fruit to science. " The death of William von Humboldt," Lepsius wrote to Bunsen on the thirtieth of April, 1835, "has greatly grieved me, as well on account of the personal kindness which he repeatedly manifested towards me, as on account of the irreparable loss which the science of language has suffered thereby. It was he especially by whom I most hoped to be understood in my philo- logical aims, and whose verdict I had always in mind throughout this last work. You must be aware that he leaves two works in manuscript, one on the Sanscrit languages of the Indian Islands, another on languages in general." The handsome stipend of the Berlin Academy smoothed Lepsius' way to Italy, whither Bunsen sum- moned him with ever increasing urgency. Up to that time, Panofka and de Witte, out of scientific enthusiasm, had taken charge of the editorial work for the Institute in Paris. W T hen they retired, Bunsen appointed Lepsius in the place of de Witte, who initiated him into the business. After his prede- cessor had left Paris, Lepsius took charge, in his absence, of the printing of the annals of the Institute and of the correspondence. These affairs claimed a 86 RICHARD LEPSIUS. large portion of his time, and he would have gone immediately to Rome, the headquarters of the Institute, had he not felt that his work in Paris was not com- pleted as far as Coptic was concerned. He also devoted himself with special ardor to ancient Egyptian and hieroglyphics. In these he continued to profit by the assistance of Salvolini, whose rapidly progressing interpretation of the Rosetta stone interested him greatly. Yet Lepsius already began to feel a slight mistrust of him, especially on account of the unfavor- able manner in which he expressed himself regarding the industrious Egyptologist Rosellini, whom Cham- pollion had esteemed highly. From Bunsen, too, Lepsius had heard nothing but praise of the latter, and moreover, Rosellini's historical works served him as a starting point for his own chronological investiga- tions, which began to interest him the more, the better he succeeded in deciphering for himself the names of kings and little historical hieroglyphic texts. For the great rapidity and certainty of his progress he was indebted to the excellent linguistic training which he had enjoyed. He had already exercised his talent for deciphering in handling the Eugubian Tables. The critical method of his philological guides had so become a part of his flesh and blood, that Bunsen could justly describe him as safe against the danger of pub- lishing anything uncertain or untenable, or of announ- cing good results prematurely. Before Rosellini had become personally acquainted with Lepsius he magnanimously confided to the prom.- LEPSIUS IN PARIS AS AN EGYPTOLOGIST. 87 ising new disciple of his science all of his notes that the latter desired to see, and gave him by letter what- ever explanations he wished. This he did in such an amiable manner that Lepsius wrote to Bunsen: "I have taken extraordinary pleasure in the inestimable liberality and courtesy of Rosellini. One meets with the contrary among the French scholars here. If the French were better etymologists they would perceive that in science as in life liberie and liberalite come from the same root." The letter which our friend sent to Bunsen on the twenty-fourth of June, 1835, as a draught of a paper to be addressed to the Berlin Academy of Sciences,* contains more detailed information as to the history of his first attempts in Egyptology while at Paris. With this communication he also submitted to the Academy the treatises mentioned above on numerical words and the oldest alphabetical systems (see page 81). The allowance of five hundred thalers which we mentioned was only granted for one year, but Boeckh had kindly prevented a motion that the stipend should be granted only once, from coming to a resolution. Thus Lepsius, who knew the state of affairs, wrote confidently to Bunsen : " I cannot think that the Academy will leave me in the lurch later, if, with God's help, I have made some progress in this fruitful science, and shown them that I am as good a husbandman as another with my plow and ox. Therefore I will henceforth specially aim to deserve the confidence of the Academy, and I * See appendix II. 88 RICHARD LEPSIUS. believe that I shall best compass this by keeping them informed of my operations on the field upon which I have entered." At that time there were, as we have already observed (See page 78), very few good inscriptions published, and in August he had already advanced so far in hieroglyphics that he was constantly looking about for new texts, in order to copy and afterwards study them. To attain the highest ends he felt that it was necessary to know and own all the inscriptions that had been preserved from the time of the Pharaohs. In Gottingen he had endeavored to obtain both material and intellectual possession of all the treasures of the plastic art of the ancients by making copies of them. Thus also in Paris he wished to acquaint him- self with all the monuments of the time of the Pharaohs which had reached that city, and either to transcribe the inscriptions upon them, to copy them by tracing, or to obtain them in the form of impressions taken on paper. Copies of such as were accessible had long lain in his portfolio, but he had heard that there was a magazine in which was stored, in utter confusion, a great abundance of Egyptian monuments, especially the larger ones. Yet it seemed impossible to obtain admission to these hidden treasures. " It is the universal complaint," writes Lepsius, " that Louis Philippe does nothing in any way for the monuments of antiquity, his taste is all for modern works of art, and he now employs all the artists and officers of the Museum on the historical picture gallery in Versailles. LEPSIUS IN PARIS AS AN EGYPTOLOGIST. 89 Just now, also, several guardians of the Louvre are occupied there, and therefore they represent that it is impossible to detail a guardian for me in the magazine." He impatiently awaited the decision from day to day, but it did not come ; indeed it was still withheld even after Herr von Werther, the Prussian Ambassador, had interposed on behalf of Lepsius, and had procured him permission to copy the Egyptian collection in the Musee Charles X. But this was of far less importance to Lepsius than what was hidden in the magazine, for there were all the sarcophagi and statues, and an exceedingly rich collection of stelae, besides a hundred and fourteen tablets of plaster casts from the walls of Karnak, and a great number of other matters. The time of his departure from Paris drew near, and it would have seemed almost intolerable to the ardent young investigator to leave France without having seen these extremely important monuments. Just then Alexander von Humboldt came to Paris, Lepsius com- plained to him of the difficulty, the most influential of all men of that time interceded for him, and he was immediately allowed access to the storehouse, at first with a guardian, but afterwards without one. Lepsius now spent the last weeks of his sojourn in Paris in taking the most careful paper impressions from all the monuments there. About fifty quires of blot- ting paper were soon consumed, and many a night of vigil did he spend in making fair copies of the descrip- tions of the monuments from which the impressions were taken, and of the results of his own measurements. 90 RICHARD LEPSIUS. These treasures, so laboriously acquired, were of great service to him later, and accompanied him from Rome to Berlin, where they now are. Furthermore, through Humboldt's mediation, he had an opportunity to inspect all the drawings and manuscripts of Champollion, and he found them " sur- prisingly copious and interesting." He was able to take the first of the forty numbers of Champollion's great work on monuments, ready printed, to Italy with him. Champollion's grammar was also soon to be published. Something had been neglected in regard to Lepsius* military obligations, which might have been momentous to the farther progress of the ardent investigator, but this oversight did him no injury either, in consequence of the warm commendation which Alexander von Humboldt had given him to the Governor of Mentz, General v. Muffling. It cannot now be ascertained on what grounds the robust and well developed young doctor was released from military service, but before us lies a letter written immediately after he had presented himself, which says, in reference to his military duties : " And now in Mentz I have been relieved of all farther anxiety in this respect." "In the latter part of my stay in Paris," he writes to Bunsen in ' the same letter, " I have learned to regard Barucchi, the director of the Turin Museum, as a very excellent and courteous man. He has promised me every possible facility and convenience in the Turin Museum for study, so that now I can go there with great confidence of good results." LEPSIUS IN PARIS AS AN EGYPTOLOGIST. 91 Gladly and hopefully he crossed Mont Cenis to Turin; and yet the parting from Paris had become hard for him. He had gained much there, and acquired a fixed aim in life; there he had come to mature manhood, and his whole personality, as well as his scientific activity and solid abilities, had awakened the same good will on the Seine as previously in Ger- many, at Leipsic, Gottingen, and Berlin. And no wonder! For nature had endowed the youth, intel- lectually so highly gifted, with a tall and imposing figure, and crowned it with a head whose beauty was to outlast the years. The noble and sharply cut linea- ments of his countenance reflected the earnestness, the force, and the acuteness of his mind, and wherever he showed himself in the circle of the leading literati of Berlin, where there was no lack of impressive heads, all eyes were drawn to him, and even strangers were attracted to inquire about him. When his abundant hair had become snow-white he was one of the hand- somest of old men. He told us, in an hour of social relaxation, that he was once climbing one of the Swiss mountains in very hot weather — I believe it was the Faulhorn, — and had sat down near the' summit, with dripping brow. A strange gentleman, who had joined him, had sunk down beside him, and had responded to his observation that it was frightfully hot : " You ought to be accustomed to that, Professor. When one has climbed the pyramids and made excavations in Ethiopia, as you have — ." Lepsius asked the stranger how he came to know him, and received from the other — as 92 RICHARD LEPSIUS. it turned out afterwards, a medical colleague from Heidelberg, — the answer, " How can one forget your medallion-countenance after once seeing it ?" His profile was, in truth, singularly fine. I, myself, first met Lepsius in his forty-ninth year, 1859, as his pupil, but the impression which he made on me at that time was such that I willingly credited the assur- ance of a Leipsic friend, whose parents' house Lepsius had frequented as a student, that he had been one of the handsomest young men of his day. The same bearing which he retained throughout his life, and which entirely corresponded to his essential nature, must also have been peculiar to him as a student. It was quiet, yet not stiff, well-bred, and equally appro- priate in all circumstances of life. Moreover, with all his industry and earnestness, he was at that time always glad to go into society, and he long preserved and cherished his musical gifts and pleasure in singing, as well as his fondness for chess. ITALY. 93 ITALY. The route which Lepsius took to Rome was entirely determined by the Egyptological studies to which he had devoted himself with such great zeal and success during the latter part of the time in Paris. It led him first to Turin. There he might hope to find all that was best and of most importance, for the Egyptian museum at Turin is now, and was at that time, one of the largest and richest in the world, and so far exceeded Lepsius* expectations that instead of several weeks he allowed himself to be detained there for more than three months. On the twenty-fourth of February he wrote to Bunsen : " I have not thought it necessary to hurry, as Turin is without doubt the most important point of my journey as far as the collection of materials is con- cerned. One realizes this thrice as strongly when one has staid here awhile and become familiar with the situa- tion. I leave this excellent museum very unwillingly, but one would have to stay for years to exhaust it, and I do not think that I have employed my time ill. You will enjoy the rich harvest which I bring you from here. I have taken paper impressions of all the inscriptions engraved on hard stone; part of them with starch, which makes them indestructible. Unfortunately, I could not continue my Parisian collection of a hundred 94 RICHARD LEPSIUS. and twenty stelae in the same way, for they were unnecessarily afraid here of injury to the limestone from the damp paper, so that the most important stelae and many other objects in limestone I have partly counter- drawn with pith paper and partly copied, and have done this to some extent in the colors, the 'value of which I first learned to appreciate properly here. The greater part of the time, though, I have spent upon the rich stores of papyrus, almost the whole of which, with all the important fragments of every kind, I have counterdrawn or copied. I have taken special pains with the large perfect ritual, which can be found here and nowhere else." He had not yet seen the stores of papyrus in London and Leyden. " It was a matter of special importance to me to possess some common basis for all the other fragments of the ritual (which are to be found everywhere; a portion of them are at Rome), for the special purpose of beginning an extensive collection of the different readings; very- necessary for the study of hieroglyphics. Therefore, I have spared no pains to compare the whole Parisian papyrus, a copy of which I have, with that here. I have noted all the different readings, in the text as well as in the vignettes, and counterdrawn all that is lacking, which amounts to about twice as much as the Parisian copy. So that I now possess the most per- fect ritual, in a volume of more than sixty sheets of paper, of half-folio size, stitched together, besides the collation of the Parisian ritual, a preparatoty work which will be very valuable for future studies." ITALY. 95 In fact all the material that he so laboriously acquired at Turin formed the foundation for his cele- brated edition of the Book of the Dead, of which we shall have to speak hereafter. Many historical dates, which are contained in the monuments preserved at Turin and the famous papyrus of the kings were also collected by him in 1836; yet he found, on his second journey to Turin in 1841, that in his first visit to the museum many of the treasures preserved there had been purposely withheld from him. From Turin he went to Pisa, partly to make the acquaintance of Rosellini, with whom he had long been in scientific correspondence, partly to study the monu- ments which the latter had brought with him, and the papyrus and other written records which were intrusted to the care of the Italian Egyptologist. " Rosellini," he writes on the twentieth of March, 1836, "received me very cordially, and I find myself well off in this excellent family, where I spend the whole day; from nine o'clock in the morning till nine at night." The monuments here had less to offer him, " but so much the more do I learn," he writes, " from Rosellini's Lexicon of Hieroglyphics. This also con- tains the accumulations of Champollion, and I shall copy it out in full. Besides this, I derive great benefit from the oral instruction and communications, which Rosellini gives me on all possible subjects without the least reservation. I quickly perceived, that I should not be able to leave this place as soon as I had expected." The following verses, with which he took g6 RICHARD LEPSIUS. leave of the Rosellinis, may show how intimate the relation had become between the young German and the family of the Italian scholar : From the South to the South I am driven away ; From the North to the South — Yet fain would I stay. From country to country, From dome unto dome From Strasburg to Pisa, From Pisa to Rome. Wert thou in the South land, Thou home ot my heart, No farther I'd wander, I'd never depart. Vet linger I may not, And so I prepare In my heart a warm shelter, And cherish thee there. Then when farther I'm roaming I'll hear thee with me, And Heaven, protecting, Will guard me with thee. Pisa, April 19, 1836. After Pisa he visited Leghorn, where was lodged the Drovetti collection, which was afterwards purchased ITALY. 97 for the Berlin Museum, by the special advice of Lepsius. The owner had asked sixty thousand francs, and got thirty thousand. Amongst the monuments was the Colossus of Rameses II, and the valuable fragment of the statue of Usurtasen I. (throne and legs). This is now restored and is the great ornament of the Egyptian collection in the capital city of the empire. It may be seen, from a letter which Lepsius wrote to Bunsen about the collection, that the fragment of the statue of Usurtasen I. had only been brought to Europe by Drovetti in order to restore with it the slightly injured colossus of the same king. The fragment consisted of the same " black granite " (properly graywacke) as the better preserved statue of Rameses II. In May, 1836, Lepsius at last arrived in Rome, richly laden with treasures. There, for the first time, he met Charles J. Bunsen, who had directed his atten- tion towards Egyptian antiquity, and had assisted him with fatherly kindness during his residence in Paris. Bunsen was at that time living on the Tiber as Prussian Ambassador, under the title of Minister Resident. He presided as chief secretary over the Archaeological Institute, which had been founded by Gerhard, with his assistance, in 1829. Ten years before the arrival of Lepsius, Champollion had visited Rome, and found there an enthusiastic admirer and disciple in Bunsen. Absorbed in numerous affairs, and in other branches of research,* the latter could devote but a small portion * The three volumes of his " Description of the City of Rome" were published from 1830-43; his " Basilicas of Christian Rome" in 1843. 98 RICHARD LEPSIUS. of his time to Egyptological studies. In Lepsius he believed that he had found the right man to continue the work of Champollion with greater success, and in a more profound and independent spirit, than the Mas- ter's two disciples, Salvolini and Rosellini. He also hoped that Lepsius would be specially fitted to take charge of the business of recording secretary of the Institute in conjunction with Braun. For this he had already proved his ability in Paris. The affairs of this learned society were at that time in a very bad condition. The most necessary pecuniary means were wanting, differences of opinion, which seemed entirely irreconcilable, divided the Parisian and the Roman- Prussian sections, and indeed there was serious question as to the continued existence of this beneficient Institute. But, as Michaelis, its historiogra- pher, expresses himself, " Danger stimulated Bunsen's elastic spirit," and at the right moment Lepsius, to- gether with Braun, " who was delighted with his expert colleague," stepped into the breach. We will not say that it was Lepsius alone who averted the threatened danger, but it is certainly to be partly ascribed to his warm personal relations with Panofka, de Witte, and the noble Due de Luynes, who was so influential in France, that the relations of the society to Paris, and its affairs in general, improved soon after his partici- pation in the management. What impression he made on his appearance in Rome may be shown by the fol- lowing passage from a letter which Bunsen's wife wrote to her mother on the twelfth of May, 1856 : " Lepsius," ITALY. 99 says this estimable lady, " has been here since Monday. He makes a very pleasant impression in regard to character as well as talents; in short, he fulfills the expectations roused by his letters, which were clear, upright, intelligent, copious, but not excessive. He has naturally refined manners, but no stiffness, and is neither presuming nor shy. It is incredible, what material he has collected for his study of Egyptian antiquities, and his drawings are wonderfully executed. You can fancy that Charles (Bunsen) is delighted to talk of hieroglyphics with him ; yet it does not make him idle, — he is busily occupied the whole day, and only at meal times and in the evenings does he enjoy such a great pleasure." At that time Bunsen was already contemplating the execution of his great work " The Place of Egypt in the History of the World," and from the first was dis- posed to confide many of the special researches for it to Lepsius. Soon, however, (indeed long before his recall from Rome), he felt inclined to offer him the honor of being his collaborator. " Bunsen and Lepsius " were to appear upon the title-page as the authors ; and if the elder scholar and statesmen furnished the great leading ideas, the young doctor, with bee-like industry, collected everything in Rome that might prove useful for the details of the work. Bunsen knew how to value the labors of the new member of the board of directors and editing secretary of the Institute, and Lepsius soon felt at home in the inspiring atmosphere of his house. IOO RICHARD LEPSIUS. The Ambassador and Gerhard both successfully- exerted their influence in Berlin to induce the Academy, which was already well disposed towards the first critically trained German Egyptologist, to grant him additional assistance. It would be impossible to imagine help more energetic, more disinterested, or more efficacious, than that which Lepsius thus received from Bunsen. The hundreds of letters before us, addressed by the former to his patron, show how the relation between them became continually more intimate and cordial. The superscription changes by degress from " Highly Honored Herr Minister," to " Dearest Hen- Privy Counselor," " My Dear, Fatherly Friend," and finally, " Most Highly Esteemed Friend." When the young scholar writes to his beloved patron on special occasions, his letters, usually calm and confined to the matter in hand, acquire a heartiness and warmth other- wise alien to them. He once wrote to Bunsen on his birthday (1839) : " My heartiest thanks for your splen- did letter of August twenty-second, and for the delight- ful lines which I received yesterday. May the Lord grant you his most abundant blessing in the new year of your life just beginning, as in all that follow, and preserve to me your fatherly affection, which has already so often strengthened, encouraged, and refreshed me. I have far greater need of you, and am more dependent on you than it may appear to you. I feel it with every sheet that I receive from your hand, and that surprises me unawares in my disposition to triviality, timidity, and every sort of narrow-mindedness. Your words, ITALY. even the most unimportant, fall like pearls upon my poverty, and I feed upon them from one letter to another." With what sincerity these ardent phrases were meant is evident from Lepsius' letters to his father and mother, in which he always speaks of Bunsen with enthusiasm and child-like affection. Even in after years Lepsius' eye would still kindle, his measured speech grow fervent, when he recalled Charles Bunsen, the inexhaustible wealth of his ideas, the depth of his knowledge, the purity of his character, and the friendship which united the statesman and investigator, though twenty years the older, with the aspiring scholar ; which only gained in strength from year to year, survived the death of the one, and was borne to the grave with the other. Bunsen had the advantage of Lepsius in a rich, poetic, soaring imagination, otherwise they had many great qualities in common. Frederick William IV. had honored Bunsen with the title of baron. Apart from this, however, he, like Lepsius, deserves to be designated as a genuine noble German freeman ; that is, a man of unalterable intrinsic superiority, who derives the right to carry his head loftily, not from external circumstances, but from honest, indefatigable, difficult, and conscientious work. To such labor they both remained faithful through all the circumstances of life, and when we see the leaders of a turbulent party claiming the name of " workman " exclusively for the man with horny hands, 102 RICHARD LEPSIUS. and exerting themselves to restrict within the narrowest limits the hours of employment for the day laborer, we would point to these two men, who free from every material solicitude of life, turned their nights into day, bade defiance to bodily fatigue, and only sought refreshment in change of occupation, in order to fit themselves for the exalted enterprise which they had imposed upon themselves. His first purely Egyptological paper presents the most brilliant evidence of the zeal and sagacity with which Lepsius, from the beginning, devoted himself to the study of the Egyptian writing and language. It appeared in the annals of the Roman Archaeological Institute, in the shape of a letter to his Pisan friend, Rosellini,* and ranks among model works of this kind on account of its wonderful succinctness, clearness and comprehensiveness. Lepsius gives in it a complete summary of the whole system of writing of the ancient Egyptians. He distinguishes, with clearness and acuteness, the elements of which this is composed, and from the Master's list of sound symbols, which was much too large, he singles out those elements which do not properly belong there, and fortunately rejects one of the fundamental errors of Champollion's system. As we now know, the phonetic part of hieroglyphics, that is the part relating to sounds, consists simply of letters which were sounded, — our matres Irctionis, — and syllabic signs. These by themselves alone can * Lettre