HIEROGLYPHICS 801 minative of sound from the ordinary use as determinative of sense.) Syllables are divided into two classes 1, an articulation and one or more vowels ; 2, two articulations (usually with a medial helping- vowel unexpressed. All are, no doubt, monosyllables, although a syllabic like saa has the appearance of a dissyllable ; here, either the first a has no force, or the two indicate a long vowel.) The first class of syllables, an articulation and a vague vowel, is scarcely distinguishable from the letters of the alphabet. The distinction is thus determined : 1, the simple letters were used as phonetic complements ; 2, the syllables do not seem to have been used quite indifferently for all kinds of words. We frequently find allusions, relations direct or remote, which have originally induced their choice for the purpose of writing this or that radical. (This is strictly analogous to the principle of the syllabary of Assyro-Baby- lonian in its Akkadian and Semitic developments, though in its application that principle led to wide polyphony, in consequence of an ideograph taking different sounds according to the cognate senses in which it was used.) It is also possible that the syllables were sometimes employed to give an idea of the sound of the vowels. But if they had this use primitively, they did not retain it, for we cannot establish this property in a constant manner in the hieroglyphic transcriptions of Greek or Semitic words. (It is indeed the converse use of the vowel most affected by a consonant or of the syllabic with its vowel which is our chief embarrassment in the reading of Semitic tran scriptions.) There were also some signs corresponding to three articulations which could be used as syllables. Here the cases of homophony are much more rare ; we have to do with different acceptations rather than different radicals, but the ideal bond between these different acceptations may escape us now. (These are still monosyllables.) POLYPHONY. There are characters which had various pronuncia tions. There are three kinds of polyphones : 1. A sign can answer to various words which belong- to the same class of ideas ; thus, the calf s ear, ^f), answers to the words dnlth. and f] _ ., at , mestfer, -t- ^ which seem to have all signified the ear or some special part of this organ. The words */) ^ ? sem, and P.-.^^X , sctem, "to hoar," are two new values, on the same principle. One might add to this first class the very near values produced by variants of pronuncia tion or writing for the same word, such as ta, taa, ta, at, aat, aat, aatu for IVo, and the forms more or less developed of a single root, but these are rather ex tensions of a word than true instances of polyphony. 2. The same sign might have been chosen as symbol of a certain number of ideas without any true bond between them, at least to our view : thus ^ answers to die phonetic ^ p , usex, "largeness," to ^ a Jf^, ab, "offering, and | ^ , hent, "regent" (fern.) 3. A sign may have become syllabic and be used for several purely phonetic values taken from the words in which it figures, on the two principles explained. Thus in the syllabary, the sign & D, which symbolizes the idea " gift," answers to two roots, tu and md; these give in their turn to ^ a the values ^ , tit, and Jkfl I, even in words where the idea of gift no longer ma exists. Such is the series of facts which has produced Egyptian polyphony. The number of figures suitable to design and with which one could reasonably charge the memory being limited, we should expect to find polyphony more or less developed in every system of writing originally ideographic. The syllabic polyphony of Assyrian seems to have been produced by wholly analogous circumstances, though the change from the original language habitually veils the connection of values. Polyphony is a source of great difficulty, and science has still much to do to fix the different phonetic values of the polyphones. Often our decision is made on the evidence of phonetic complements, and in hieratic it is seldom that this aid is wholly omitted. Thus ^-|v^ ^ s eas ity recognized as md. But our ignorance is not always thus aided, and the choice of the suitable word sometimes can only be indicated by a profound study of analogous texts. The following list gives an abridgment of De Eoug^ s lists of syllables, and contains the most common signs, the important polyphones being indicated by asterisks, and their principal varieties of sound being given in the fourth column. The method is varied from that of the Chrestomathie. TABLE OF THE MOST COMMON SYLLABIC SIGNS. SIGN. SOUND. SIGN. SOUND. A K 1* ^^ act uu 1* 15 Ices ka 2 <-=> aa K 3 f ah, db 1* T 15 ka
.6. 1 < ... i ta 4 T ab 2 CrO tu 5 V ap 3
tip 6*
- 0
at sem, set, set T X teb 1 U 7 41- am T ^r t a 1 (^ 8
am 2 B t er V M 9* 1 dm ka,kem,TcSm, 1 ma 1 neh J 2" 3 D md 10 In an, an lli 3* A D md tu 11 f ^ X 4
md h 5* A ma, neh 12 rT as _ J Q}H Lr 6* c= =ib met ka, Idh u ~ 7 I*"""" 1 ! mtn 1 2 1 ua uat 8
m&r u 9 1=3 mZr 3 .^3 un 10 i mes 4 ^ ur 11 inch 5* I uas sem N 1 i i i nn 6 1 uah 2* ^ nu nltu F 1 A 00 f* 3 j nefer 4 ^n^ ntt B 1 ^o ba~ 5 fss^ nZb P V 1 crm p&r 6 ^} ntm 2* ^ jpeh hek 7 5 num
XI. 101