Fragments on Egyptian Literature, 113 



In the ordinary use of this word, to denote an earthly parent, 

 a lituus is substituted for the hatchet ; or, more commonly, 

 the word is abbreviated. It is scarcely necessary to say that 

 I consider the vulture as a phonetic character, representing 

 the letter M. It is stated by Horappollo, that this bird alone 

 expressed the idea of "mother;" and I have sometimes been 

 inclined to think that the Egyptian word for that idea was 

 simply Ma, and that MOUTH was a contracted compound, 

 signifying *• mother-goddess." If this be the case, M. Cham- 

 pollion has only partially explained the Greek word QspfxovQi^^ 

 which before his time was so completely misunderstood. Its 

 correct interpretation will be ZHeR-M*-OUTHiS, that is, 

 " the great mother-goddess." 



ii. Names of Osiris and Isis. The hieroglyphical names of 

 the deities Osiris and Isis have been universally supposed to 

 be symbolic. The impossibility of reading them according to 

 the corresponding Greek names, by assigning any phonetic 

 value to the throne, the character with which they both com- 

 mence, is very obvious. I am, nevertheless, decidedly of opi- 

 nion, that the names are phonetic ; and I consider the throne 

 to represent the letter S. The characters which compose the 

 name of the male deity are a throne, an eye, a solar disc, and 

 a hatchety or figure of a God, Of these, however, either the 

 second or third is generally omitted ; the former as a vowel, 

 the latter for abbreviation's sake ; just as the final N is omitted 

 in writing the word SoTeN, king, and other letters in 

 other instances, where the characters which are written 

 are sufficient to determine the meaning : but all the four ele- 

 ments above enumerated occur, amongst other places, on 

 a cippus in the Borgian Museum. {Precis, pL xii.) The 

 three first of these characters may be read SIRE ; the fourth, 

 we have seen, in the last fragment, is O or OU ; and it was, by 

 different persons and in different places, pronounced with or 

 without the article, and placed before or after the distinguish- 

 ing appellation of the deity. Hence were formed the several 

 words, Sireou, Sirepou, Ousire and Pousire, all signifying 

 *• the God Sire ;" which were pronounced by the Greeks, 

 some slight changes having been made in the vowels, and the 

 terminations having been accommodated to the genius of their 

 language, Se/^ior , Sspa'jnf or 'Lxpocmf, Ompis and Bot/ff/pij-. The 



JAN.— MARCH, 1830. I 



