of the Letters of the Hieroglyphic Alphabet. 153 
which is generally found accompanying the other,* and the ideographic exple- 
tive of the deaf, already met with in figs. 17 and 30. 
These examples will, I trust, be sufficient to convince any one who will can- 
didly examine the subject, that the principle of expletive letters, already shewn 
to have been recognized among the Egyptian scribes in the age of the papyri, 
was also recognized under the twelfth dynasty, and even before it. 
It will be proper that, before I leave this branch of my subject, I should say 
something of the origin of this strange practice, and the probable reason of its 
being continued. I must first, however, draw attention to a fact connected with 
these expletive letters, which is calculated to throw much light on the matter. 
My object having been hitherto to establish the existence of letters in a word 
which were not mtended to be sounded, I have selected words in which there 
was reason to suppose that the letters in question were not to be sounded. Other 
words might, however, be adduced, in which a letter, sometimes inserted and 
sometimes omitted, should be always sounded. For example, the adverb signi- 
fying “twice” is generally written as in fig. 58, TI; but in one of the papyri 
(PI. 27, 1. 11) it is written at greater length TUI. This form occurs in the 
word signifying ‘‘a griffin,” which is usually written AKHeKH, as in fig. 59, 
but appears here as in fig. 60, the adverb “twice” being substituted for the 
second seve. ‘The monstrous bird, omitted in the figures, which is used as a 
determinative sign of both words, and the similarity of the two contexts, leave no 
doubt as to their identity. No person who compares this adverb with the equi- 
valent Gothic, Sanskrit, and old Latin forms, can doubt that the U is properly 
a part of the word, and that, when written as in fig. 58, it should be pronounced 
Twi. Here, then, the ¢, in the form of a semicircle, is to be expanded to tw, 
while in other instances, as in fig. 33, the fw is to be reduced to ¢. 
The following is, then, a correct statement of the law, as deduced from obser- 
vation, by which the use of these characters was regulated. 
Almost every letter in the Egyptian alphabet has a subsidiary letter, or ideo- 
graphic character, implying a letter or letters, which, when placed after it, com- 
pletes its name. When this subsidiary character follows the principal letter, it is 
in general to be passed over as superfluous ; but, in a few instances, it should be 
* In my paper on the Stele, I improperly interpreted this determinative sign, ‘‘ of all sorts.” 
VOL. XXI, U 
