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



Ins. 93), the deceased person is called "the attendant upon the king in his 

 journeys to the southern and northern countries, who went from Naharina 

 (Mesopotamia) to Karai in the suite of his majesty." It is worthy of observa- 

 tion, that these are the identical limits of the Egyptian empire, which are 

 recorded on the Liverpool and Paris scarabaei (as already noticed), in the eleventh 

 year of Amenothph III., the son and successor of this king. This deceased 

 person, whose name was Amenothph, was also "first prophet of Empe" and 

 " superintendent of his Majesty's cattle stall ;" and he held another office under 

 the crown, the nature of which I do not understand. 



After the name of the person commemorated by the tablet, there occurs very 

 commonly, in inscriptions of all ages, an addition on which I will make a few 

 remarks. It commences with the word Me (yo) " truth," expressed either 

 symbolically, by an ostrich feather or a measure ; phonetically, by the sickle and 

 arm, which represent the two component letters of the word ; or in both ways 

 combined, the measure or feather, the sickle and arm being all used. This is 

 followed by a club, T, representing the word Taoue, " speaking," the subsequent 

 or complementary letters of which are but seldom expressed. And after this we 

 occasionally meet characters which I consider to belong to the sentence; namely, 

 Chal, (^n) a preposition, answering to the Hebrew ^a or ■?, " to," and either 

 the name of Osiris, or the two N's, the hatchet and the pike, with which the 

 words Nter, " god," and Naa, " great," are written, and which are commonly 

 used as abbreviations of those words. I would then translate the entire addition, 

 not as ChampoUlon has done " the truth-speaking, le veridique,"* but " who has 

 spoken the truth to Osiris," or " to the great god."f This expression I under- 

 stand in a forensic sense, as meaning "who has been justified, or pronounced 

 Innocent, by Osiris." It has been expressly stated by Diodorus, that the presi- 

 dent of every Egyptian court of justice wore a badge, which was called Truth, 



vias sister to Thothmos Mephre, and that they were children of King Thothmos II. It is there- 

 fore Mephre that we should call Thothmos III. ; and his grandson, under whom this tablet was 

 sculptured, must be Thothmos IV. 



* I do not deny that the two former words would have this meaning, if they stood alone; as they 

 do in the praenomen of the successor of Amenemhe III., whose phonetic name has not yet been 

 ascertained, " The sun who speaks truth." But I conceive that in the addition of which I am speak- 

 ing, the subsequent words, if not expressed, are always to be understood. 



t Or as I have observed in one place, " To the lords of the abode of glory." 



