Charles Speel Article

Charles Speel, "The Strange Saga of Monmouth's Storied Stone" Scotsnewse, Winter 1995, pages 18-19.

Picture of Charles Speel with the Canopus Stone

In the 1950s, when I was teaching a course in Biblical archaeology, I had occasion to be in Sunnyside Hall (now Austin Hall). The custodian asked me to look underneath the staircase to the basement where there were some pieces of plaster. On the pieces, I noted some inscriptions, most of them in the Greek language. With the help of some students I brought the pieces to Room 108 of Wallace Hall and fitted them together upon a table.

When I had translated some of the Greek and puzzled over the two extant lines of Egyptian hieroglyphs, I conferred with Professor Harold Ralston of the Classics Department. We went to the library and, after some search in college publications, found some notations written by Professor Hutchinson in the 1882 edition of the Monmouth Collegian, about the Stone of Canopus, a cast of which had been presented to Monmouth College. This led us to an article in Scribner's Magazine. Fortunately, the library had copies of that magazine. In the August 1873 issue was an extensive account of the stone's discovery.

The Stone of Canopus was unearthed in 1868 by a team of archaeologists from Germany who were working in the ruins of San, the area named Zoan in the Bible. The stone, of limestone, seven feet high by two-and-a-half feet wide, contained a trilingual inscription, with the hieroglyphs and Greek on the front and hieratic or demotic on the side. The hieroglyphs, now recognized as a consonantal script in the style of the Middle Kingdom, was a style that had become preferred by subsequent religious and royal writers of special decrees and notices. The Greek was the classical Greek used in Alexander the Great's time. The hieratic was the script of the common Egyptian or Coptic language.

In 1799, during Napoleon's expedition in Egypt, a stone with a trilingual inscription had been uncovered in the Rosetta area. It also had hieroglyphs. Knowledge of the meaning of hieroglypha had been lost for many centuries and the task of decipherment occupied European scholars for about 35 years. Jean Francois Champollion guessed correctly that the glyphs within oval cartouches were royal names and from there his decipherment of the Rosetta Stone progressed. He had unlocked the mystery of the meaning of many glyphs.

The importance of the inscription on the Stone of Canopus is threefold. First, because it contains many more glyphs than the Rosetta Stone, it makes possible a marked increase in the knowledge and meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs which appear extensively in Egypt and aids both archaeologists and historians. Second, the Canopus inscription provides historical data, lost to the world since the days of Constantine, about Egypt's famine relief, military campaigns and Egyptian religious and royal organization and government. Third, it provides the most accurate annual calendar used in the ancient world, a calendar of 365-1/4 days per year.

The Monmouth College Connection

The cast of the stone of Canopus has a particular importance for Monmouth College. A few years prior to 1868 the Rev. Julius Lansing, a Presbyterian missionary who had received his theological training at Monmouth, went to Assiut, Egypt, where the United Presbyterian Church of North America had established a missionary station, church and school. Lansing, among other activities, taught children of the fellahin--the poor peasants--to read and write. Until then it was generally held in Egypt that only children of the royal and upper classes had the mental capacity to learn to read and write. When Ismail, the Pasha, learned of Lansing's success with fellahin, he invited Lansing to be his assistant, in charge of developing a nationwide system of "public education." The system soon proved to be highly successful, resulting in an "each-one, teach-one" movement. When the Stone of Canopus was uncovered and moved to the Museum at Boulac by order of Ismail Pasha, he agreed to have casts or "squeezes" of the stone made for the Berlin Museum, the British Royal Museum and--at the persuasion of Lansing--Monmouth College. Influenced by the U.S. Consul, the cast destined for Monmouth was first sent to the newly established Smithsonian Institution, where an additional cast, a "matrix," was made. The Monmouth cast was then forwarded o Monmouth College with the stipulation that other colleges could, with the permission of Monmouth, procure casts of the stone from the Smithsonian.

The cast was eventually placed in the Monmouth College "museum" on the upper floor of Old Main. Established in 1863, the collection was also known as the "College Cabinet" and included a geological collection, an oriental collection and zoological specimens. When fire destroyed Old Main in 1907, the cast fell through to the ground floor, breaking into many pieces, only some of which were recovered from the debris. Stored in the Sunnyside basement, the fragments were neglected, further damaged, forgotten and finally stashed under the stairway. When I found the, they were covered with mopes and buckets.

The refitted cast in Wallace Hall remained on the table in Room 108 for several years where, despite requests written on the adjacent blackboard to refrain from placing any items upon the cast, people frequently laid overcoats, books, etc., upon it. Such action did not improve the clarity of the inscription. Some years later, I talked with Dean St. Ledger, then in charge of buildings and grounds, about the possibility of having a case made for the portion of the cast that had bee rescued from the debris of Old Main, namely the Greek inscription and two extant lines of hieroglyphs. St. Ledger had a case made with a lockable glass door.

Several months after the recovered pieces of Monmouth's cast had been fitted together on the table, I wrote to my undergraduate psychology professor, Dr. Leonard Carmichael of Brown University, who had become director of the Smithsonian. I told him about the fate of Monmouth's cast and asked if the Smithsonian could return the favor, initiated by Julian Lansing, by sending a copy of the Smithsonian's cast to Monmouth. He replied that he would be glad to do so, but could not, because the Smithsonian had had a fire about 1922 in which its cast had been destroyed. Photographic plates were available.

Some time later I learned from Dr. Gus DeBeek, the Egyptologist at the Smithsonian, that Carmichael had been misinformed. The Smithsonian's cast had not been destroyed in the 1922 fire. It was stored in a warehouse of the museum. It would take time and considerable effort to retrieve it, make a cast and crate it for shipping to Monmouth. Moreover, it might have entailed some expense. Gus said he could try to fulfill the request.

Alas, the project has been forgotten. Carmichael is deceased and DeBeek is retired. It may be that a replacement cast for Monmouth College can be obtained, along with copies of the photographic plates, providing the cost and efforts for so doing can be met by interested persons. If so, the academic influence and legacy of Monmouth College can be further enriched.

-By Charles Speel.

Since this time, the stone has been moved to the Hewes Library of Monmouth College. Also, the side piece on which the demotic text was carved has been found in the antiquities collection of Monmouth College by Rick Sayre. It, however, is in poor condition and no photos are yet available.