178 Rev. Epwarp Hincks on the Number, Names, and Powers 
that, in some of the cases where one of the MSS. contains a line that is wanting 
in the other, it was improperly added rather than improperly omitted. In such 
instances as these, no one can doubt that in the transcription of, at least, one of 
the MSS. errors have been committed. Is it not reasonable, then, to infer that, 
in the instances in which words appear to be differently spelled in the two MSS., 
this difference resulted, like the other, from error ? 
But if the Egyptian scribes were careless in what they wrote for the living, 
can we wonder at their being so when they wrote the funeral MSS., which they 
never expected would be read at all? Yet it is on the comparison of these 
MSS. with one another, assuming that the differences which appear in them are 
legitimate variations of the same forms, that many persons seem to rely, as the 
surest mode of ascertaining the values of those phonoglyphs, which do not appear 
in Greek and Roman proper names. It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at, that 
this method should have been recommended by Champollion, when the know- 
ledge of hieroglyphics was yet in its infancy; but after its having been tried by 
him and Salvolini, and after observing the numerous and ridiculous errors into 
which the last of these writers was led by it, it is truly wonderful that Chevalier 
Bunsen should still recommend it as the best mode of investigation. In addition 
to all the sources of error to which other transcriptions are subject, those of the 
funeral MSS. were peculiarly liable to be faulty from two distinct causes of 
error that affected them, as well as from that carelessness to which I have already 
adverted, arising from their not being expected to be read, and their being, con- 
sequently, committed to the most ignorant scribes. One of these causes is, that 
the papyrus was sometimes written in hieroglyphics, but was copied from a hiero- 
graphic original. This was the case with the Turin MS., of which Dr. Lepsius 
has published a copy, as with many others. If characters resemble one another 
in their hierographic forms, the transcriber might write the hieroglyphic equiva- 
lent of one in place of that of the other ; and thus a hieroglyph may be substituted 
for another to which it has no resemblance at all. As examples of this, I refer to 
Ch. 109, ce. 10, of the Todtenbuch, where the character, fig. 122 a, is written in 
place of 123 a. It has no resemblance at all to it ; but the hierographic charac- 
ters corresponding to the two (figs. 122 b, 123 b) are very liable to be con- 
founded. So, in the same plate, Ch. 110, c. 12, we have Spr for Spt, a mis- 
take occasioned by the resemblance of ¢ and 7 in their hierographic forms, which 
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