aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

ANCIENT SCIENCE IN EGYPT. 807
After mentally and architecturally enriching other cities,
the reputation of Heliopolis began to fade soon after the
conquest of Egypt by Greece ; the Grecianized city of
Alexandria taking its place.
THE BOSETTA STONE, AND COPTS.
When visiting London the first time, nothing interested
me more than the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum.
Rosetta, in Arabic, Rasheed, is handsomely located on the
west bank of the Nile, near its mouth.
This modern town,
founded by a caliph, 870 A.D., is built upon the site of
some ancient city. Its present archaeological celebrity was
acquired by the finding of the trilingual stone, known as
the " Rosetta Stone," discovered by the French in 1799,
while digging foundations for a fort.
This invaluable tablet
contained a decree made by the priests of Egypt in honor of
Ptolemy Epiphanes, 196 B.C. It was written in hieroglyphic,
enchorial, and Greek. This gave the key to the
Egyptian alphabet, the old Coptic, and to the reading of
the hieroglyphical inscriptions. Copt is the language
written on most of the monumental walls in Egypt.
The Arabic is the vernacular of the country to-day, though
there are many dialects spoken in the various parts of Egypt.
The Coptic Church is the national church. Its archbishop
of Alexandria, though residing in Cairo, is said to be
the direct successor of Mark the Evangelist. So run these
theological threads ; the Catholics looking to Peter, the
English Church to Paul, the Coptic Church to Mark, and
the Greek Church to the embodied wisdom of the apostolic
fathers. The liturgy of the Copts is in the ancient Coptic.
Their forms of worship resemble the Catholic ; but they
utterly deny the authority of the Pope.
None doubt the Copts, so numerous in
Middle and Upper
Egypt, being the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians.
Their brown complexions, almond-shaped eyes, and heavy
lips, resemble the face of the Sphinx, the ancient paintings,