CHAPTER IV - Collections of the French.—Mr. Drovetti.—Mr. Champollion's Discoveries

Summary

ALTHOUGH the discovery of the general import of the hieroglyphics has by no means excited any great sensation in this country, yet the activity of the various collectors resident in Egypt seems to have been in some measure stimulated by it. Important additions have been made, or are about to be made, to the Egyptian department of the British Museum; and in France, the magnificent liberality of the Government, together with the insatiable curiosity of some affluent individuals, has held out ample encouragement to the commercial antiquarian.

I thought myself extremely fortunate, in my return from the short excursion to Rome and Naples, that I made in the autumn of 1821, to have discovered at Leghorn, among a multitude of Egyptian antiquities, belonging to Mr. Drovetti, the French consul at Alexandria, which had long lain warehoused there, a stone containing an enchorial and a Greek inscription, which was known to have existed formerly at Menouf, but which had been lost and almost forgotten by European travellers in Egypt, and I believe by Mr. Drovetti himself; for I am informed that it is not mentioned in the catalogue of his Museum, which has been sent to Paris and elsewhere.