figures called leaves or feathers, I or E; and a vertical line bent at the upper end, OSH or OS. "Putting all these elements together," he observes, "we have precisely PTOLEMAIOS, the Greek name; or perhaps PTOLEMEOS, as it would be more naturally called in Coptic."

The Doctor then proceeds to identify the name of Berenice, the group b in our engraving, in the same manner. "The wife of Ptolemy Soter, and mother of Philadelphus, was Berenice, whose name is found on a ceiling at Karnak, in the phrase 'Ptolemy and Berenice, the saviour gods.' In this name we appear to have another specimen of syllabic and alphabetic writing combined, in a manner not extremely unlike the ludicrous mixtures of words and things with which children are sometimes amused. The first character of the hieroglyphic name is precisely of the same form with a basket represented at Bibân-elMolouk, and called in the description, panier à deux anses;' and a basket in Coptic is BIR. The oval which represents an eye without the pupil, [or perhaps a mouth] means elsewhere 'to,' which in Coptic is E; the waved line is 'of,' and must be rendered N; the feathers I; the little footstool seems to be superfluous; the goose is KE or KEN. Kircher gives us kenesoü for a goose, but the esoü means gregarious, probably in contradistinction to the Egyptian sheldrake, and the simple etymon approaches to the name goose in many other languages. We have therefore literally BIRENICE, or if the N must be inserted, the accusative Birenicen, which may easily have been confounded by the Egyptians with the

nominative. The final characters, (a semicircle and an egg,) are merely the feminine termination."*

One of the most assiduous and enthusiastic of the students of Egyptian antiquities was M. Champollion, who, though not the discoverer of the hieroglyphic interpretation, did very much in the elucidating and carrying out of the mode proposed by Dr. Young. A year or two after the communication noticed. above, an obelisk had been brought from Philæ by Mr. W. J. Bankes, and erected at Kingston Hall, Dorsetshire, which contained an inscription in Greek, and one in hieroglyphics, and it was conjectured that, as in the Rosetta Stone, the one might be a translation of the other. The purport of the Greek inscription was "a supplication of the priests of Isis residing at Phila to king Ptolemy, to Cleopatra his sister, and to Cleopatra his wife:" the obelisk being consecrated to these personages. Lithographed copies of the hieroglyphics having been sent to the Academy of Inscriptions, M. Champollion discovered the name of Ptolemy, as it had already been identified on the Rosetta Stone, and that of Cleopatra also. He proved, too, that the hieroglyphics were the signs of letters only, and not of syllables, as Dr. Young had supposed. His

*This was not quite accurate. It is now known that the symbols are letters, not syllables; that the name was spelled BRNEKS, (probably for Berenikes," of Berenice,”) and that the basket represented the letter B, the mouth R, the waved line N, the leaves E long, the footstool K, the goose s.

+ Mr. Bankes had himself already discovered the name of Cleopatra, while in Egypt. (See Mr. Salt's "Essay on the Phonetic System.")

identification of the name Cleopatra, which is the group c of our engraving, is interesting.

"The first sign of the name of Cleopatra, representing a sort of quadrant, which ought to be the letter K (or C), should not occur in the name of Ptolemy, and it is not found there. The second, a crouching lion, which should represent L, is identical with the fourth of Ptolemy, which is also L. The third sign is a feather or leaf, which should be the short vowel E. Two similar leaves may be observed at the end of the name of Ptolemy, which, by their position, must have the sound of E long. The fourth character, on the left, represents a kind of flower or root with its stalk bent downwards, and should answer to the letter O, and is accordingly the third letter in the name of Ptolemy. The fifth, on the right, is a sort of square, which should represent the letter P, and it is the first in the name of Ptolemy. The sixth, on the left, is a hawk, which should be the letter A, which does not occur in the Greek name Ptolemy, nor does it occur in the hieroglyphic transcription. The seventh is an open hand, representing T, but this character is not found in the name Ptolemy, where the second letter T is expressed by the segment of a sphere. The author thought that these two characters might be homophonic, that is, both expressing the same sound, and he was soon able to demonstrate that his opinion was well-founded. The eighth sign, a mouth seen in front, ought to be the letter R, and as that letter does not occur in Ptolemy, it is also absent from his hieroglyphic name. The ninth, and last sign, which ought to be

C

the vowel A, is a repetition of the hawk, which has that sound in the sixth. The signs of the feminine, on each side of this hawk, terminate the name of CLEOPATRA; that of Ptolemy ends with a bent stalk, which we conclude to be the letter S."

We will not enter into an examination of the enchorial writing, or system of the common people; because its antiquity appears to be far less than that of the hieroglyphic, of which it is but a degenerate form, adapted for rapid use; and because it seems chiefly confined to documents upon paper, the business records and transactions of common life; those records which illustrate historical events of the earlier periods, about which our present work is mainly concerned, being more ordinarily transmitted in the sacred or hieroglyphic characters, inscribed upon the almost imperishable monuments. The study of the former, however, greatly assisted the unveiling of the latter; and it was much promoted by some very remarkable coincidences, to which we can only allude, of correspondent documents, one in Egyptian and a counterpart or duplicate in Greek, coming to the hands of Dr. Young at the same time, though discovered by distinct collectors in Egypt, and transmitted to Europe by persons having no connexion with each other.

The object of this volume is not an examination of the written language of ancient Egypt; we shall, therefore, merely add that the hieroglyphics appear to be used in two distinct modes, which we may call symbolic and alphabetic. To a very great extent, the characters convey to the mind the ideas they are

intended to produce, directly, by a picture. Sometimes the symbols are indirect, conveying the idea by a resemblance or connexion, more or less remote, and often very fanciful; as when an ostrich's feather represents justice, because all the feathers in the wing of that bird are equal; or when a palm-branch signifies a year, because that tree was supposed to produce twelve branches in a year. Sometimes the idea is conveyed by a sort of pun, or play upon words, the picture or symbol being an object whose name is of the same sound with that of the intended word, but of very different meaning; as if one should express the adjective dear by the figure of a deer. The alphabetic power of the symbols appears to have been attached to them, from the commencing sound of the name of the object depicted; as if, in English, we should represent the letter or sound A by the figure of an apple, or an adder, or an ant; that of B by a butt, or a badger, or a butterfly. And as many objects readily depicted begin with the same sound, many hieroglyphics are found to have the same power; as we saw in the case of the letter T in the royal cartouches, that in Cleopatra being a hand, that in Ptolemy a semicircle. This variety afforded to the writer a considerable latitude in the choice of symbols, permitting him to consult a certain degree of symmetry in the arrangement of the whole. The same consideration seems to have determined whether the order of the arrangement should be vertical or horizontal; if the former, the writing was to be read from the top downwards; if the latter, it was to be read from that side towards which