means "mirror;" and Nen-ha, "the mirror of water," was anciently one of the names of the Mexican Gulf. This also may be a coincidence.
No one has ever told us why the learned hierogramanatists of Egypt gave to the sign 
the value of ma. No one can; because nobody knows the origin of the Egyptians, of their civilization, nor the country where it grew from infancy to maturity. They themselves, although they invariably pointed toward the setting sun when questioned concerning the fatherland of their ancestors, were ignorant of who they were and whence they came. Nor did they know who was the inventor of their alphabet. "The Egyptians, who, no doubt, had forgotten, or had never known the name of the inventor of their phonetic signs, at the time of Plato honored with it one of their gods of the second order, Thoth, who likewise was held as the father of all sciences and arts." [1]
It is evident that we can learn nothing from the Egyptians of the motives that prompted the inventor of their alphabetical characters to select that peculiar figure 
to represent the letter M, initial of their word Ma. The Mayas, we are informed,[2] made use of the identical sign, and ascribed to it the same signification. We may perhaps find out from them the reasons that induced their learned men to choose this strange geometrical figure as part of their symbol for Ma, radical of Mayach, name of the peninsula of Yucatan. Who knows but that the same cause which prompted them to adopt it suggested it also to the mind of the Egyptian hierogrammatist? Many will, no doubt, object that this may all be pure coincidence — the two peoples lived so far apart. Very true. I do
- ↑ Champollion, Précis du Système Hiéroglyphique, p. 355.
- ↑ Landa, Relacion de las Casas de Yucatan, chap, xli., p. 322.
