“Some of our older fellow-specialists complain that we of the younger generation are depriving Egyptology of all its charm, and that, out of a delightful science, abounding in startling discoveries, we have made a philological study, with strange phonetic laws and a wretched syntax.  There is doubtless truth in this complaint, but it should be urged against the natural growth of the science, and not against the personal influence of individuals or its development.  The state through which Egyptology is now passing is one from which no science escapes.  It is a reaction against the enthusiasm and the rapid advance of its early days.

“I can well understand to outsiders it may seem as though we had only retrograded during later years.  Where are the good old times when every text could be translated and understood?  Alas! a better comprehension of the grammar has revealed on every side difficulties and impediments of which hitherto nothing had been suspected.  Moreover, the number of ascertained words in the vocabulary is continually diminishing, while the host of the unknown increases; for we no longer arrive at the meaning by the way of audacious etymologies and still more audacious guesses.

“We have yet to travel for many years on the arduous path of empirical research before we can attain to an adequate dictionary.  There is indeed an exceptional reward which beckons us on to the same goal, namely, that we shall then be able to assign to Egyptian its place among the languages of Western Asia and of Africa.  At present we do well to let this great question alone.  As in the linguistic department of Egyptology, so it is in every other section of the subject.  The Egyptian religion seemed intelligently and systematically rounded off when each god was held to be the incarnation of some power of nature.  Now we comprehend that we had better reserve our verdict on this matter until we know the facts and the history of the religion; and how far we are from knowing them is proved to us by every text.  The texts are full of allusions to the deeds and fortunes of the gods, but only a very small number of these allusions are intelligible to us.

“The time has gone by in which it was thought possible to furnish the chronology of Egyptian history, and in which that history was supposed to be known, because the succession of the most powerful kings had been ascertained.  To us the history of Egypt has become something altogether different.  It comprises the history of her civilisation, her art, and her administration; and we rejoice in the prospect that one day it may be possible in that land to trace the development of a nation throughout five thousand years by means of its own monuments and records.  But we also know that the realisation of this dream must be the work of many generations.

“The so-called ‘demotic’ texts, which lead us out of ancient Egypt into the Graeco-Roman period, were deciphered with the acumen of genius more than half a century ago by Heinrich Brugsch, but to-day these also appear to us in a new light as being full of unexpected difficulties and in apparent disagreement with both the older and the later forms of the language.  In this important department we must not shrink from a revision of past work.