Chap. II. DENON's eulogy by his pains to protect the sculptures from BOOK II, harm. Now, their excessive zeal and their national pride CLASSICAL led to an unworthy result. The Rosetta stone was stripped ARCHEOLOof the soft cotton cloth and the thick matting in which it EXPLORERS. had been sedulously wrapped, and was thrown upon its face. Other choice antiquities were deprived of their wooden cases. GISTS AND THE ROSETTA When TURNER, with a detachment of artillerymen CAPTURE OF and a strong tumbril, went to the French head-quarters to STONE; receive the Rosetta stone, he had to pass through a lane of angry Frenchmen who crowded the narrow streets of Alexandria, and were not sparing in their epithets and sarcasms. Those artillerymen, too, were the first English soldiers who entered the city. When Colonel TURNER had gotten safely into his hands the stone destined to mark an era in philology, he returned good for evil. He permitted some members of the Institute of Egypt to take a cast of it, which they sent to Paris in lieu of the original. The Rosetta inscription had been found, by the French explorers, among the ruins of a fortification near the mouth. of the Rosetta branch of the Nile. When they discovered it the stone was already broken, both at the top and at the right side. Of its triple inscription, commemorative of the beginning of the actual and personal reign of PTOLEMY EPIPHANES—and therefore cut nearly two hundred years before the Christian era—that in the hieroglyphic or sacred character had suffered most. The second or enchorial inscription was also mutilated in its upper portion. The Greek version was almost entire. The scarcely less famous Alexandrian sarcophagus was found by the French in the court-yard of a mosque called the Mosque of St. Athanasius.' Of its discovery and state when found, the following account is given in the Description de l'Egypte :-A small octagonal building, covered BOOK II, GISTS AND EXPLORERS. Description de l'Egypte, vol. v, pp. 373, seqq.; Plates and Append. (Svo edit.), 1829. EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES EMBARKED AT ALEXAN- with a cupola, had been constructed by the Moslems for their ablutions, and in this they had placed the sarcophagus to be used as a bath; piercing it for that purpose with large holes, but not otherwise injuring it. The sarcophagus is a monolith of dark-coloured breccia-such as the Italians call breccia verde d'Egitto-and is completely covered with hieroglyphics. Their number, according to the French artist by whom impressions in sulphur were taken of the whole, exceeds 21,700. Dr. CLARKE's identification of this monument as the tomb of Alexander has not been supported by later Egyptologists. This sarcophagus, with most of the other antiquities, was LIST OF THE sent on board the flagship Madras. The Rosetta inscription, Colonel TURNER embarked, with himself, in the frigate Egyptienne. His own list of the antiquities thus brought, in safety, to England runs thus: (1) An Egyptian sarcophagus, of green breccia; (2) another, of black granite, from Cairo; (3) another, of basalt, from Menouf; (4) the hand of a colossal statue-supposed to be Vulcan-found in the ruins of Memphis; (5) five fragments of lion-headed statues, of black granite, from Thebes; (6) a mutilated kneeling statue, of black granite; (7) two statues, of white marble, from Alexandria Septimus Severus and Marcus Aurelius; (8) the Rosetta stone; (9) a lion-headed statue, from Upper Egypt; (10) two fragments of lions' heads, of black granite; (11) a small kneeling figure, of black granite; (12) five fragments of lion-headed statues, of black granite; (13) a fragment of a sarcophagus, of black granite, from Upper Egypt; (14) two small obelisks, of basalt, with hieroglyphics; (15) a colossal ram's head. Nos. 10 to 15 inclusive were all brought from Upper Egypt. (16) A statue of a woman, sitting, with a model of the capital of a column of the Temple of Isis at Dendera, between her feet; (17) a fragment of a lion-headed statue, of black granite, from Upper Egypt; (18) a chest of Oriental Manu- BOOK II, scripts-sixty-two in number-in Coptic, Arabic, and Turkish. Chap. II. CLASSICAL GISTS AND History of Europe, vol. v, edition). I have given the more careful detail to this notice of the EXPLORERS, archæological results of the capitulation of Alexandria, inasmuch as a very inaccurate statement of the matter has found its way into an able and deservedly accredited book. Sir Archibald ALISON, in his History of Europe (probably from See the some misconception of the compromise effected between General TURNER and the French Commander-in-Chief), p. 596 (last writes thus:-' General HUTCHINSON, with a generous regard for the interests of science and the feelings of these distinguished persons [the Members of the Institute of Egypt], agreed to depart from the stipulation and allow these treasures of art to be forwarded to France. The sarcophagus of ALEXANDER, now in the British Museum, was, however, retained by the British, and formed the glorious trophy of their memorable triumph.' General TURNER's conspicuous service on this occasion did not end with the transport into England of the Alexandrian Collections. Before the Rosetta inscription was, by the King's command, placed, together with its companions, in the British Museum, as their permanent abode, General TURNER obtained Lord BUCKINGHAMSHIRE's assent to the temporary deposit of the stone from Rosetta in the custody of the Society of Antiquaries, by whose care copies of the inscriptions were sent to the chief scholars and academies of the Continent, in order that combined study might be brought to bear, immediately, upon the contents. This circumstance makes it all the more honourable to our countryman, Dr. Thomas YOUNG, that by his labours upon the stone a strong impulse was first given to the progress of hieroglyphical discovery. The accessions from Alexandria served, also, to initiate Book II, ARCHEOLO GISTS AND 1804, July 2 another improvement. When, in 1802, they reached the CLASSICAL Museum, its contents had so increased that the old house afforded no adequate space for their reception. They had, EXPLORERS. like some famous sculptures of much later acquisition, to be placed in sheds which scarcely preserved them from bad weather, and were even less adapted to facilitate their study. The Trustees made their first application to Parliament for the enlargement of the Museum Building, ‘in order to provide suitable room for the preservation of invaluable monuments of antiquity which had been acquired tary Debates, by the valour, intrepidity, and skill of our troops in an expedition seldom equalled in the annals of the country.' And before presenting their petition they determined that increased facilities should be given for the admission of the Public, as soon as they should be enabled to make an adequate increase in the staff of the establishment. Parliamen vol. ii, col. 901, seqq. When the extension of the British Museum came first to be discussed in the House of Commons (somewhat grudgingly and captiously it must, in truth, be acknowledged), upon the application of the Trustees, some of their number were already aware that an accession was likely soon to accrue through the munificence of a fellow-trustee, which would make a new and extensive building indispensable. Charles TOWNELEY had already made a Will in virtue of which as it stood in 1804-the Towneley Marbles were devised in trust for the British Museum, on condition that the Trustees thereof should, within two years from the time of the testator's decease, set apart a room or rooms sufficiently spacious and elegant to exhibit these antiquities. most advantageously to the Public,-such rooms to be exclusively set apart for the reception and future exhibition of the antiquities aforesaid.' Circumstances not foreseen in 1802, when Colonel TowNELEY'S Will had been first made, led afterwards to a change in the mode in which his noble Collection was to be received by the Public. But its preservation and public accessibility, in one way or other, had long been resolved upon. The TOWNELEYS, of Towneley, rank among the most ancient and distinguished commoners of Lancashire. They can trace an honourable descent to a period antecedent to the Conquest. They have been seated at Towneley from the twelfth century. Several of them have given good service to England, in various ways, in spite of the obstacles and discouragements which, for many generations, clave to almost every man whose convictions obliged him to adhere to the Roman Catholic Church, and so to incur the pains and disabilities of recusancy. Of these they had their full share. One TOWNELEY had been mulcted in fines amounting to more than five thousand pounds, simply for remaining true to his belief, and had been, for that cause, sent (with an ingenuity of torment one is almost tempted to call diabolic) from prison to prison across the breadth of England, and back again.* Another TOWNELEY was driven into an exile which lasted so long that when he returned into Lancashire everybody had forgotten his features and his voice, except his dog. But neither fine, imprisonment, nor banishment, had converted them to Protestantism. Hence it was that Charles TowNELEY, the Collector of the Marbles, received his education at Douay, and contracted This John Towneley was sent first to Chester Castle, then to the Marshalsea in Southwark, then to York Castle, and to a block-house in Hull. From Yorkshire he was sent to the Gatehouse at Westminster, and thence to a jail in Manchester. From his Lancashire prison he was presently hustled into Oxfordshire, and sent thence to another prison at Ely. The gallant old recusant survived it all, to die at Towneley at last. Book II, Chap. II. ARCHEOLO. |