Rev. Edward Hincks on the Egyptian Stele, or Tablet. 61 



and which the monuments show us to have been an image of Thme, the goddess 

 of Truth or Justice, who is represented sitting, with an ostrich feather on her 

 head, and a bandage over her eyes. With this figure he touched the successful 

 party in the suit; thus announcing to him that the decision of himself and his 

 assessors was in his favour. This was as much as to say to him that " he had 

 spoken the truth ;" that his plea was true. In accordance with this, the unsuc- 

 cessful accuser, the adversary of the deceased, is called in the ritual "the liar." 



Here I cannot refrain from noticing the extraordinary mistake, into which 

 Sir J. G. Wilkinson has fallen with respect to this badge, which he supposes to 

 have been the same as that worn by the Jewish high priest ; arguing from the 

 similarity of the words Thme and Thummim. The resemblance between these 

 words is merely apparent, and disappears when we reduce them to the radical 

 forms. The initial Th of the Egyptian word is the feminine article, while the 

 j^ of the Hebrew word is radical ; and, on the other hand, the Egyptian word 

 has at the end of it a letter having the force of the Hebrew y, to which there is 

 nothing equivalent in the Hebrew word that has been supposed to correspond 

 with it. The resemblance, then, between the names (yo and dji) it not real; 

 nor were the purposes for which the two badges were worn at all similar. 



The addition, of which I have been speaking, which is commonly abbreviated 

 to two characters, such as 



W 



or 



appears to belong to deceased persons exclusively ; so that it might be translated 

 " deceased," or " the late." It is contrasted with the characters, 



1^ 



which, when they follow the name of a man, imply that he is alive. Thus, 

 on a broken tablet, in the British Museum (Eg. Ins. 27) the person comme- 

 morated is called Imothph, deceased, son of Hapi, still alive ; and of a deceased 

 mother, daughter of a deceased person, and sister to a living person. It was, 

 however, in most cases, considered sufficient to express that a person was 

 alive, if the characters for deceased were omitted after his name. Now, as 



