THE PALEOGRAPHY OF DIFFERENT NATIONS.

EGYPTIAN.*

No nation has left so many inscriptions as the Egyptian. All its monuments are covered with them. Its temples, palaces, tombs, isolated monuments, present an infinite number of inscriptions in hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic characters. The Egyptians rarely executed a statue, or figured representation, without inscribing by its side

its name or subject. This name is invariably found by the side of each divinity, personage, or individual. In each painted scene, on each sculptured figure, an inscription, more or less extensive, explains its subject.

The

The characters used by the Egyptians were of three kinds-hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. The latter has been also termed enchorial, or popular. first was doubtless a system of representational signs, or picture writing-the earliest form of writing, in the first stage of its development; the hieratic is an abbreviated form of the hieroglyphic; the demotic, a simplified form of the hieratic, and a near approach towards the alphabetic system.

Hieroglyphics (styled by the Egyptians skhai en neter tur-writing of sacred words) are composed of signs representing objects of the physical world, as animals, plants, stars, man and his different members, and various objects. They are pure or linear, the latter being a reduction of the former. The pure were always sculptured or painted. The linear were generally used in the earlier papyri, containing funereal rituals.

Hierog

*In this chapter we are much indebted to Sir G. Wilkinson's treatise on 'Hieratic and Demotic Writing,' in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus.'

They have been divided into four classes:-1, representational or ikonographic; 2, symbolic or tropical; 3, enigmatic; 4, phonetic. From the examination of hieroglyphic inscriptions of different ages, it is evident that these four classes of symbols were used promiscuously, according to the pleasure and convenience of the artist.

1. Ikonographic, representational, or imitative hieroglyphics, are those that present the images of the things expressed, as the sun's disk to signify the sun, the crescent to signify the moon. These may be styled pure hieroglyphics. This class is the kuρLOλογικὴ κατὰ μίμησιν of Clemens Alexandrinus.

2. The symbolical, or tropical (by Bunsen termed ideographic), substituted one object for another, to which it bore an analogy, as heaven and a star expressed night; a leg in a trap, deceit; two arms stretched towards heaven expresses the word offering; a censer with some grains of incense, adoration; a bee was made to signify Lower Egypt; the fore-quarters of a lion, strength; a crocodile, darkness. This kind of character appears to have been particularly invented for the expression of abstract ideas, especially belonging to religion or the royal power. These are the characters generally alluded to by the ancients when they speak of hieroglyphics, and are the most difficult of interpretation.

3. Enigmatic are those in which an emblematic figure is put in lieu of the one intended to be represented, as a hawk for the sun; a seated figure, with a curved beard, for a god. These three kinds were either used alone, or in company with the phonetically written word they represented. Thus: 1. The word Ra, sun, might be written in letters only, or be also followed by the ikonograph, the solar disk (which if alone would still have the same meaning-Ra, the sun). So too the word "moon," Aah, was followed by the crescent. In these cases the sign so following the phonetic word has been called a determinative, from its serving to determine the meaning of what preceded it. 2. In the same manner, the tropical hieroglyphics might be alone or in company with the word written phonetically; and the expression "to write," skhai, might be followed or not by its tropical hieroglyphic, the "pen and inkstand," as its determinative sign. 3. The emblematic figure, a hawk-headed god, bearing the disk, signifying the " sun," might also be alone, or after the name "Ra" written phonetically, as a determinative sign; and

as a general rule the determinative followed, instead of preceding the names. Determinatives are of two kinds-ideograms, and generic determinatives: the first were the pictures of the object spoken of; the second, conventional, symbols of the class of notions expressed by the word.*

4. Phonetic. Phonetic characters or signs were those expressive of sounds. They are either purely alphabetic or syllabic. The purely alphabetic signs are given in the plate. All the other Egyptian phonetic signs have syllabic values, which are resolvable into combinations of the letters of the alphabet. This phonetic principle being admitted, the numbers of figures used to represent a sound might have been increased almost without limit, and any hieroglyphic might stand for the first letter of its name. So copious an alphabet would have been a continual source of error. The characters, therefore, thus applied, were soon fixed, and the Egyptians practically confined themselves to particular hieroglyphics in writing certain words.

Hieroglyphic writing was employed on monuments of all kinds, on temples as well as on the smallest figures, and on bricks used for building purposes. On the most ancient monuments this writing is absolutely the same as on the most recent Egyptian work. Out of Egypt there is scarcely a single example of a graphic system identically the same during a period of over two thousand years. The hieroglyphic characters were either engraved in relief, or sunk below the surface on the public monuments, and objects of hard materials suited for the glyptic art. The hieroglyphs on the monuments are either sculptured and plain, or decorated with colours. The coloured are divided into two distinct classes, the monochromatic of one simple tone, and the polychromatic, or those which rendered with more or less fidelity the colour of the object they were intended to depict.

* Champollion ('Paléographie Universelle') ascribes the necessity of the determinative sign to the custom, as among Oriental nations, of omitting the middle vowels of words in Egyptian writing; this would produce confusion in respect to words unlike each other in meaning, but written with the same consonants. Thus the words Nib, an ibis, and Nebi, a plough, were traced in the same manner by two hieroglyphical characters, expressing only N and B. All confusion of ideas and words, however, was avoided, by placing at the end of each phonetic word an additional determinative character, which determined the meaning of the word, and its real pronunciation.