of the Letters of the Hieroglyphic Alphabet. 135 
myself to the first of these; stating, however, my conviction that he was still 
more astray in the other than I shall now prove him to have been in this. The 
Egyptian phonoglyphs are susceptible of a double classification, in respect to 
their nature, and in respect to their powers. Of the first classification Champol- 
lion seems to have had very little idea. A few of the characters in his list are, 
indeed, marked B. E., indicating that they were only used in the times of the 
later Ptolemies and of the Emperors ; or E. S., implying that they only occurred 
in a sort of secret writing, used in certain inscriptions of the age of the nine- 
teenth or twentieth dynasty. To three or four others there is added “ Init.,”” 
apparently as an after-thought, for it is not explained in the text of his work ; 
and here and in his 82nd section, “ on abridged phonetic names,” we have the 
germ of Dr. Lepsius’ discovery of the restricted use of certain phonoglyphs, and 
of their complementary letters. As to the second classification, according to 
their powers, Champollion arranged his phonetic characters in sixteen divisions, 
exclusive of one which contained the hieroglyphic representations of the five 
Greek letters, A, Z, =, ®, and VY, which had no single Egyptian characters 
properly equivalent to them, and which must, therefore, be expressed either by 
combinations of characters, or by such as properly expressed approximate sounds. 
The sixteen classes are vowels, fourteen consonants, and ligatures, that is, double 
consonants. The number of characters arranged in these classes is, according to 
Champollion’s own enumeration, 247; but several of these are mere variations of 
other characters which appear in the lists; about ten are combinations of charac- 
ters which appear separately; and many more are marked E. S. or B. E. The 
true number of distinct simple phonoglyphs in general use before the low epoch 
was, according to Champollion’s view of the matter, 167; of which thirty-two 
were vowels, and three double letters. To a few of these more than one power 
is assigned, but this is rather to be considered as resulting from the unfinished 
state of the work than as intentional. In addition to the defects which exist in 
his classifications, Champollion committed many errors in respect to particular 
characters: he placed some in wrong classes with respect to their powers; he 
marked some that were in use in early times as not being so; and he omitted 
marking many that were certainly not in use till the low epoch, if, indeed, they 
were ever in use at all. On the other hand, he omitted many characters from 
his list, the phonetic powers of which are unquestionable. His alphabet was thus 
