of the Letters of the Hieroglyphic Alphabet. 191 
doubt entertained; but I have never met with it as a phonoglyph in the age of 
the papyri, nor indeed till the eighth period. On what grounds Chevalier Bunsen 
has given it a place in the ancient alphabet I cannot conjecture. I, of course, 
reject it altogether. 
22. An arm occurs as a letter in texts of all ages, from the coffin of Menkare 
downwards. From its corresponding to a vowel in Greek transcriptions and in 
Coptic words, aaH, 009, the moon, and many others, it was classed by Champol- 
lion among the vague vowels, and by Chevalier Bunsen is made an A. It appears, 
however, that it expressed a sound which was wanting in the Greek alphabet, as 
well as in the Coptic, and which had consequently been lost during the ages of 
foreign dominion which preceded the introduction of the Coptic alphabet. In 
transcriptions I. 1, II. 1, 2, and III. 1, it corresponds to the Hebrew y, as it does 
apparently in the verb signifying “to travel in a foreign country ;’” Nal, con- 
nected with the Hebrew y1, “to wander.” This verb occurs Pap. Pl. 107, 6 
(fig. 139), eMNal, “in the act of wandering.” The objection to this view of 
the power of the arm is, that it occurs in many foreign words where we do not 
find the Hebrew y; but I reply that we must dismiss from the account all those 
words in which it follows the owl or half arch, as MaLeK (fig. 61), for 750, 
because it is here a mere expletive ; and that, when this is done, no word can be 
produced in which it can be proved to occur without having a y to correspond to 
it. Champollion gives, indeed, a word beginning with this letter, as aR Ma, o7N, 
* Assyria,” Gr. p.501; but the true reading is No>y, ‘ Persia.” This character 
is not often followed by an expletive, but has sometimes a vertical line after it, 
and sometimes the gwaz/ ; compare Pap. Pl. 21, 1. 5, and 135, 1.9; whence we 
may infer that the old word, signifying an arm, was of the masculine gender, and 
consisted of the arm followed by the guaz/. I propose to use the Hebrew yayin 
to express the compression of the larynx which it represented. The name of 
an arm would then be yU. This letter occurs in the alphabet y1; y 1. In 
hierographic writing, a character frequently follows this letter instead of an 
expletive, which had no phonetic or ideographic value, but was merely used to 
fill a void space, as in the hierographic figure. 
23. A leaf is considered by Champollion and Chevalier Bunsen as equivalent 
to the arm ; but I do not find them interchanged in ancient Egyptian texts ; 
and in transcriptions the /eaf is represented by the Hebrew x, while the other is, 
