800 HIEROGLYPHICS was used side by side with x and in the same dialect. The Copt noted carefully shades of sound which appear to us very near. Tte cartouches of the Persian kings render the Persian kh by j anc! by ; these two signs answer to H of Hebrew words, but wt must here draw a distinction. We know that the p comprises two shades of sound which Arabic distinguishes by ; the hiero glyphic transcriptions establith the antiquity of this distinction in the pronunciation ; for they render the H sometimes by or T , the Egyptian x, and sometimes by 8, h, as will be shewn later. A The Coptic derivatives of the ancient x are of two classes. In the first the mempliitic dialect faithfully observes the ancient orthography, preserving the <Q ; we find in the same words a Sahidic . In a second class of words the ancient x is softened, and we find a < in the two dialects. The exceptions, conforming to the laws of affinity, are the Memphitic tyT, the (> , and the K. ASPIRATES. The Copts borrowed but one aspirate, & , from the demotic alphabet. The Semitic transcriptions indicate, however, two shades of sound, at least as marked as those which are found in French in the letter h. The Greeks, who had lost the habit of writing the aspiration rf of their ancient alphabet, equally omitted (in most cases, but note T 12pos well as T f2/>os for her) to transcribe the Egyptian h, at least when they had not occasion to indicate it by an aspirated letter, as (f>~ij3t.s for p-hib, "the ibis." As to the hierogramraats, they sometimes used their h, FD , to indicate the breathing at the beginning of Greek words which they transcribed, or in seeking to render I I aspirated letters by the combination pit, Jr: , th, 5 , for <p, 0. The Hebrew H , as already stated, answered to two shades of sound ; these also existed in Egyptian, so that the Semitic tran scriptions take the following progressive order: 1, H = FD, h ; 2, I"!, o = 8 , Ti ; 3, n , , = , X- It is therefore needful to distin guish these two aspirates in the point of view of the transcription of foreign (Semitic) words, for they have a considerable importance for the 9 determination of these words. The distinction of frj , h, and 8 , Ti, the latter being a strengthened aspirate, would be less useful for Coptic, for this distinction had been lost, the Copts having taken from o the demotic the sign of th strong aspirate , , coming from 8 , hieratic g . demotic The Coptic derivatives have almost all preserved faithfully the Q in the two dialects. The exceptions are rare ; they introduce the Memphitic <} , the cy , and the K ; it is also possible for the aspiration to be obliterated and the Coptic to present an initial vowel. The rare variants which may be remarked in the Egyptian texts between the aspirates and the other letters are limited to x> r to the initial vowels. SYLLABIC SIGNS. An ideographic sign could be employed in four different ways. Of this the sign y, the symbol of "life," may be taken as an illustration. 1. It could be used alone, y , to indicate the idea of " life" and the different words conveying this idea ("life," "to live," " living"). 2. The same sign could be written after the phonetic expression of one of the words signifying life, thus ZzZ^-, anx, Coptic CJUrf,>, " life." Here the sign takes no part in the pronunciation ; it simply determines the idea which we should attach to the word an-% preceding- it : in this use it is called, following Champollion, a determinative. 3. The same sign could be accompanied by all or by a part of the letters used to write the word an% : the letters thus used have been termed phonetic comple ments ; their choice (as to number) is ordinarily ruled by the necessities of design, in which the squareness of the group was much considered. Tim? we find or dinarily -^ ^ , with the second and third complement; but j _ o^^^T an d . _ o would be equally in accord with rules. A group of this kind is said to be written in the mixed manner. 4. The same sign, once attached to a word such as dnx, could be used in writing- for the phonetic value of this word with a complete loss of the primitive sense. This is exactly a rebus in principle. Thus, AL jp ffl f an x , " ear ;" ^ , " oath," Coptic, Aft *."). A deter- minative often indicates to the reader, as in the first example, this radical change in the use of the sign. In this case the sign is said to be employed as a syllabic. (The Assyro-Babylonian syllabary is remark able as affording a double system of this kind, arising from the original Akkadian sounds of a sign and the later Assyro-Babylonian ones. The difference is in the extensive polyphony of this syllabary.) Probably in principle all hieroglyphics were susceptible of use as syllables j but in fact, it was necessary for this 1, that a symbol should represent a word composed of a simple syllable, and, 2, that we should find this syllable in different words. The list of the most usual syllables of known value, in the Pharaonic period, amounts to considerably over three hundred. It is therefore not enough to have established the fact that a certain syllable corresponds in reading to a symbol, for us to consider the S3 r mbol as being properly a syllabic. We must also have found it sometimes more or less turned from its ideographic value and corresponding to a simple sound, to write which it takes the place of the letters of the alphabet. hus the essential character of the syllabic is the abstraction made of the ideographic value for its use as a sound pure and simple. It is only as syllables and determinatives that the ideographs belong to grammar. Those that do not play these parts have their proper place in the dictionary. Syllables, as well as ideographs, can be written alone or with phonetic complements in the mixed manner ;
- he choice (and arrangement) of the complements
depended on the needs of the designer. Thus we find scm, grouped thus, ft "j? fl &c. } the legs J , here determining i movement. The second phonetic complement is found frequently ,
- he first is more rare, and there are syllables for which
t has not yet been discovered. The writer seems to lave had full liberty in this matter. From these facts it s evident that we cannot retain Champollion s term, initial signs," nor adopt Lepsius s division, in his Lettrc a Eosellini, into "initial signs" and signs intended br the middle of a group. Bunsen s division into syllabic signs and mixed signs is equally untenable. A sign could wholly lose its ideographic value, although vritten as a determinative. Thus the word <^I|, ar, determined by a shoot(?) of palm, signified "season," 1 time ;" but to write the syllable tar, in another word, is htar, " horses," it was not necessary to drop the leterminative {, and the whole group ^ [j i, tar, ould be retained; thus: < = >t|l/r^$ l ; htar, Coptic g,TO, "horse." This peculiarity may embarrass the nterpreter, particularly in texts carelessly written, where he determinative of the idea is often omitted or in correctly given. (Mr. le Page Renouf distinguishes
his use of the determinative by the term deter-