the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ (6th edit.) several scientific articles containing important results of his own—e.g. ‘Bridge,’ ‘Cohesion,’ numerous biographies, e.g. Hon. Henry Cavendish [q. v.], Sir Benjamin Thompson, count von Rumford, and Coulomb; and to Brand's Journal several articles on geodetic and astronomical subjects.
Many attempts had been made during the eighteenth century to interpret the hieroglyphic inscriptions found on Egyptian remains, but all had failed. It had been conjectured, however, that some at least of the characters represented sounds, and that those enclosed in an oval line represented proper names. When, in 1799, a tablet was discovered at Rosetta, at the mouth of the Nile, with a decree of the priests inscribed on it in hieroglyphic (sacred), enchorial (cursive), and Greek characters, it was seen that the Greek might afford a clue to the interpretation of the Egyptian inscriptions. Silvestre de Sacy first interpreted three proper names in the enchorial text, and Akerblad and Champollion claimed to have interpreted the whole of it, but up to 1814 neither had published an interpretation. In October of that year Young communicated to De Sacy a complete translation of the enchorial (or, as it is now called, demotic) text, and in 1815 published (Archæologia, vol. xviii.) a comparison of the translations of the demotic and Greek texts. In a letter to De Sacy (3 Aug. 1815) he announced his discovery that the demotic characters were not all alphabetic, but that some were symbolic. By next year he had found that the enchorial characters were derived from the hieroglyphic, and in 1818 he wrote for the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ the justly celebrated article ‘Egypt,’ in which he pointed out the phonetic character of the hieroglyphs in the ovals, which he found to be royal names. From the name Ptolemy (Ptolemaos), which occurred several times in the Rosetta inscriptions, he obtained the hieroglyphs now transliterated p, t, l, m, y, s, and to which he assigned the values p, t, ole, m, i, os, respectively, and from other portions f, to which he gave the correct value. His analysis of an oval containing the name of Berenice in an inscription at Karnak was not so happy, only one letter, n, being correct. In addition to the beginnings of a hieroglyphic alphabet, Young gave in his article a hieroglyphic vocabulary of about two hundred signs not alphabetic, most of which have been confirmed by more recent research.
In 1821 Champollion, who had continued his study of Egyptian inscriptions, published a work, ‘De l'Ecriture Hiératique des Anciens Egyptiens,’ in which he stated that the hieroglyphs were ‘signs of things and not of sounds.’ Before another year had passed he changed his opinions, and, applying Young's method to an oval containing the name Cleopatra, obtained the hieroglyphs for k and r, and an alternative one for t. From this point his progress was rapid, and his memorable work ‘Précis du Système Hiéroglyphique’ appeared in 1824. The parallel, but virtually independent, investigations of the two scholars are elucidated by Renouf in ‘Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology’ (xix. 188 et seq.).
In November 1822 Young discovered that an ancient Greek manuscript brought by G. F. Grey of Oxford from Thebes was a translation of a demotic papyrus in the Paris collection, which he was at the time studying. It related to the sale by the priests of the offerings made to the gods on behalf of certain mummies, and enabled many new facts with respect to the demotic character to be established. These Young made known, together with his original work on hieroglyphs and the advances since made by Champollion, in his ‘Account of some Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature and Egyptian Antiquities’ (1823). He kept up for the rest of his life a correspondence on Egyptian subjects with Sir W. Gell and Champollion, and was engaged on an Egyptian dictionary at the time of his death.
Young contributed to the ‘Quarterly Review’ several archæological, philological, and critical articles; and to the supplement to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ (6th edit.) the article ‘Language,’ and several lives of scholars—e.g. Richard Porson [q. v.]
Young, though not quite so tall as represented in his portrait, was well formed in person, and took great delight in bodily exercise. ‘His language was correct and his utterance rapid.’ His temper was remarkably even, a consequence probably of his early training, and his domestic life singularly happy. He ‘was emphatically a man of truth,’ ‘could not bear … the slightest degree of exaggeration,’ was ‘in all the relations of life upright, kind-hearted, generous,’ and ‘entirely free from either envy or jealousy’ (Gurney). He was ‘accustomed to reciprocate visits with the best society,’ ‘and was always ready to take his part in a dance or a glee, or to join in any scheme of amusement calculated to give life and interest to a party’ (Peacock). His success as a physician was not so great as might have been expected. He practised in
