140 Rev. Epwarp Hincks on the Number, Names, and Powers 
I consider this period to include the reign of Seti (or, as some call him, Meneph- 
thah) the First; that of Rameses the Third (or, as some call him, the Fourth), 
the hero of Medinet Haba; and those which intervened between these two. 
This period is peculiarly proper to be chosen as that of which the records should 
be made the groundwork of our inquiries, as it comprehends the principal sculp- 
tures at Thebes, and also the Anastasi and Sallier papyri, of which fac semiles 
have been published by the trustees of the British Museum, who have thus ren- 
dered the most important service to the cause of Egyptian philology. I will, 
in the second place, shew that the substitution of the names of letters for the 
letters themselves was not confined to foreign words, but that the monuments 
and papyri of this age contain numerous instances of the applications of this prac- 
tice to purely Egyptian words. And, lastly, I will shew that the practice did 
not originate in this period, but that instances of it are to be found on monu- 
ments of the twelfth dynasty, and anterior to it. 
The first place where I observed the expletive characters belonging to the 
Egyptian letters, so distinctly expressed as to enable me to ascertain their nature, 
was in some foreign words, occurring in the papyri just mentioned, of which 
transcriptions in Hebrew characters occur in the Old Testament. In the two 
first instances which I am going to mention, the writers of the papyri introduced 
Hebrew, or at least Semitic, words ; in the others, they gave the names of places 
in Asia which are mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures. I will give the first of 
these words, by way of specimen, in both the hierographic characters used in the 
papyrus and the corresponding hieroglyphic ones. The others I will give in the 
last only. In every case I will refer to the plate and line, in the fae simile edi- 
tion of the papyri, where the word occurs; and I will give the mode of pro- 
nouncing it according to the alphabet and system of Chevalier Bunsen, together 
with the Hebrew transcription. I will, of course, select words in which all the 
letters have had their true powers, or nearly so, assigned them by the Chevalier; 
but I wish it to be distinctly understood that I am now merely establishing the 
principle of expletive characters; and that, in adopting the received values of 
the letters in this place, I do not bind myself to do the same when I come to 
investigate the true power of each in the third part of this paper. 
The first word (figs. 11, 12) occurs Pl. 97, 1.7; and in PI. 60, 1. 5 it occurs 
again, with this difference : in place of the last two characters, the branch of a 
