of the Letters of the Hieroglyphic Alphabet. Wid 
used from the earliest period to express the pronoun feminine singular, and 
the prefix forming causative verbs; the ow/ and half arch (fig. 120), used for 
the prepositions “in, by ;” and the waved line and under crown (fig. 121); are 
the only ones which can be said to be habitually interchanged in the age of the 
papyri: a few other occasional interchanges will be noticed in the following part. 
In general, the Egyptian scribes had one standard mode of writing each word, 
from which it was an error to deviate, except so far as was required in order to 
alter the grouping of the characters, in passing from horizontal to vertical writing, 
and vice versd ; and for this purpose the interchanges already mentioned were 
sufficient. In the use of words which contained syllabic signs, and in words of 
rare occurrence, the mode of writing was more liable to be changed; but even 
here variations in respect to the completion of the syllabic signs, the introduction 
of expletives, and the ideoglyphs which accompany the phonoglyphs, are much 
more frequent than substitutions of one phonoglyph for another. And, while I 
do not deny that these substitutions, where they do occur, may be good evidence 
of the equivalence of characters, I must protest against the rash use of them as 
evidence, which has been made and recommended by former writers. It has 
been assumed that whatever came from the hand of an Egyptian scribe was cor- 
rect ; and, consequently, that if a word was found written in two or more dif- 
ferent ways, they were equally proper; and, so far as they consist of phonetic 
characters, must represent the same sounds. An attentive examination, how- 
ever, will soon satisfy any one that the Egyptian scribes were very care- 
less copyists. Even m manuscripts intended for the use of the living, as the 
Sallier and Anastasi papyri, great mistakes were committed. The second in the 
former collection, and the seventh in the latter, were transcribed by the same 
person from the same original, being a collection of ancient poems; the former 
in Tybi of the first year, the latter in Paoni of the sixth year of Seti II.; yet 
they differ in a vast number of places. Sometimes one MS. omits a line, or a 
portion of one, which the other retains, as in Pl. 17, 1.53; 20, 1.8; 134, 1.3; 
sometimes one of them inserts a character improperly, as in Pl. 16, 1. 3, where a 
rather remarkable character, having the power of the Hebrew n, is introduced 
between two words. The eye of the scribe had been caught with it a little fur- 
ther on in the line, and when he had once written it he was unwilling to blot it 
out. Erasures seldom or never occur in the MSS.: hence, it is not improbable 
VOL. XXI. Z 
