SEYFFARTH THE HIEROGLYPHIC TABLET OF POMPEIUM. 20/ 



tioned, it is probable that the Pompeian slab was inscribed in 73 

 A.C., before Domitian was out of minorit}-, according to his 

 image. 



g^ h, i, k represent eight male and female worshippers of El, 

 and the adjoined figure of the terrestrial plain or semi-globe, as 

 the ancients imagined, called fievRi (r. ficoR, circumire), indicates 

 that the said worshippers were inhabitants of the city, viz. Pom- 

 peii. This figure of '•^ Tellui" with its four corners (east, south, 

 west, north) is not an ideologic determinative of cities, as the 

 poor ChampoUionists fancied, but always signifies the letters bk. 

 G.JE. p. 83, No. 415. The same syllabic sign recurs in Nos. 

 13, 23, 46, 105, 107, 162, 191, 192, 240, 272, 312, 387, and by no 

 means indicates city names, as our geographer would have us 

 believe. 



/ represents the traversing threads of a texture, the weft. Germ. 

 Einschlag, the Coptic Ron, r. cisd (kapap). Germ. Koep-ern ; 

 wherefore it expresses kp. G.yE. p. 112, No. 591. The redu- 

 plication of kp, the word ssLd^nDcn, capere, is formed by the sub- 

 sequent breast, kb ri6c. G.^. p. 49r No. 153. Hence we have 

 the word 2t«.n2cn, the Latin cap-ere, to take. Comp. No. 392. 

 The following kr furnishes the word X^f'^^i gaudium, the cor- 

 rupted ly^^'P'' gaudere, as we shall see directly. 



B The Text of the Pompeian Tablet. 

 1. The open mouth represents crying, .*.\pA, xnp (qara), and 

 hence it must express kr and /', as was already discovered in 

 1S26 (R. H. Tab, xxxvi. ad n No. xi.) Comp. G. ."E. p. 48, No. 

 143. Indeed it expresses k, rc, xac (R. S. v. 19; ix. 20; xiii. 

 38), kr kl\n Chaldrea (T. S. 1. vi. ix.), in n^j (gir,T. S I. xxxvi.), 

 and numberless other words of the Rosetta and Tanis stones. 

 Poor Lepsius, imagining that the language of the ancient Egyp- 

 tians was the modern Coptic, and that the open mouth, signify- 

 ing r in Roman proper names, constantly expressed r, had the 

 misfortune to spell and translate several hundred hieroglyphic 

 words of the Tanis Stone wrongly. From the mass of his ab- 

 surdities we select some specimens illustrated by their demotic 

 orthography. See PI. xxx. Nos. 415-17, a. Moreover, the word 

 '/co(U(frj^ corruptly ujopn, occurs very often, e.g. T, B. 26,3, where 

 we read Krj[d (Saturn) xofucprj, ^Top— nv Saturn, the ■first of the 

 gods. Comp. T. B, 142, 2. G. brings out "prince." 



