14 DANIEL WILSON ON THE RIGHT 
are more easily and naturally executed, without lifting the pen, with the left hand than 
the right. Others again, in the slope and the direction of the thickening of the stroke, 
suggest a right-handed execution, but habit in the forming of the characters, as in 
writing Greek or Arabic, would speedily overcome any such difficulty either way. I 
feel assured that no habitually left-handed writer would find any difficulty in acquiring 
the unmodified demotic hand ; whereas no amount of dexterity of the penman compelled 
to resort to his left hand in executing ordinary current writing suffices to prevent such a 
modification in the slope, the stroke, and the formation of the characters, as clearly indi- 
cates the change. 
So soon as the habitual use of the papyrus, with the reed pen and coloured pigments, 
had developed any uniformity of usage, the customary method of writing by the Egyptian 
appears to have accorded with that in use among the Hebrew and other Semitic races ; 
though examples do occur of true hieroglyphic papyri written from left to right. But the 
pictorial character of such writings furnishes another test. It is easier for a right-handed 
draftsman to draw a profile with the face looking towards the left; and the same influence 
might be anticipated to affect the direction of the characters incised on the walls of temples 
and palaces. This has accordingly suggested an available clue to Egyptian right or left- 
handedness. But the evidence adduced from Egyptian monuments is liable to mislead. A 
writer in “ Nature” (J. 8., April 14th, 1870), states as the result of a careful survey of the 
examples in the British Museum, that the hieroglyphic profiles there generally look te the 
right, and so suggest the work of a left-handed people. Other and more suggestive 
evidence from the monuments of Egypt points to the same conclusion, but it is deceptive. 
The hieroglyphic sculptures of the Egyptians, like the cufic inscriptions in Arabian 
architecture, are mainly decorative; and are arranged symmetrically for architectural 
effect. The same principle regulated their introduction on sarcophagi. Of this, examples 
in the British Museum furnish abundant illustration. On the great sarcophagus of 
Sebaksi, priest of Phtha, the profiles on the right and left column look towards the centre 
line; and hence the element of right-handedness is subordinated to decorative require- 
ments. If this is overlooked, the left-handedness ascribed above to the ancient Egyptians 
may seem to be settled beyond dispute, by numerous representations both of gods and 
men, engaged in the actual process of writing. Among the incidents introduced in the 
oft-repeated judgment scene of Osiris—as on the Adytum of the Temple of Dayr el Medi- 
neh, of which I have a photograph,—Thoth, the Egyptian God of Letters, stands with the 
stylus in his left hand, and a papyrus or tablet in his right, and records concerning the 
deceased, in the presence of the divine judge, the results of the literal weighing in the 
balance of the deeds done in the body. In other smaller representations of the same 
scene, Thoth is similarly introduced holding the stylus in his left hand. So also, in the 
decorations on the wall of the great chamber in the rock-temple of Abou Simbel, Rameses 
is represented slaying his enemies with a club, which is held in his left hand; and in the 
sculptures of Pasht, she is decapitating her prisoners with a scimiter, held in the left 
hand. This evidence seems so direct and indisputable as to settle the question; yet 
further research leaves no doubt that it is illusory. Ample evidence to the contrary is to 
be found in Champollion’s “ Monuments de l'Egypte et de la Nubie”; and is fully con- 
firmed by Maxime Du Camp’s “Photographic Pictures of Egypt, Nubia, etc.,” by Sir 
J. Gardner Wilkinson’s “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,” and by other 
