of the Letters of the Hieroglyphic Alphabet. 225 
strength, is altogether equivalent. It occurs in the prenomen of Necho, “ Pha- 
raoh the strong (or active) hearted.” This word is frequently used in connexion 
with that which signifies “ gold,” or “a precious metal ;’’ and frequently the pe- 
culiar initials are used intersecting each other, as in fig. 176, which is CoyoM NuV, 
“strong or hard, i.e. alloyed gold,” not “pure gold,” as Champollion and Ro- 
sellini imagined. The latter has given a plate, in which the goldsmith is repre- 
sented forming this “hard gold ;” evidently by melting together gold and cop- 
per, or some other alloy, in a crucible ; and has interpreted the hieroglyphics as 
if he was purifying the gold,—the very reverse of their meaning ! From this use 
of the word it came to signify, when the sparrow was added to it, the usual de- 
termination of what is bad, ‘to pervert or corrupt,” the Sahidic Coogan. 
On the whole, I feel confident that this character is equivalent to the long 
serpent, and that it could neither have been a T nora K. I regard it as most 
probably CH, but, if not, as TS. Its expletive was the eagle, and it was used 
at least as early as the beginning of the third period (Sharpe, E. I., 86, 6). 
49. A weight (K 3; k3) was used in the second period (Sharpe, E. I., 36, 1), 
and had for its expletive the leaf. That this is to be considered an expletive, 
and not a complement, follows from the establishment of the general principle, 
and needs not to be maintained separately. Its value was considered by Cham- 
pollion to be SH, because, as he said, the word signifying “ cat,” answering to 
the Coptic wa, began with it. He was followed by Lepsius ; but Chevalier Bun- 
sen, considering that argument inconclusive, as the letters which had the value of 
KH became gj in Coptic, gave this letter the syllabic value xa. I find, however, 
that aj sometimes represents the K of the old language as well as X and SX. 
The basin and square mat, KaP, corresponding to the Hebrew »2, “a palm of 
the hand,” is represented by the Coptic qort; and I think there are other in- 
stances, though not equally certain ones. The weight may, therefore, have been 
K; and that this was its true value appears to me highly probable from two con- 
siderations ; in fact, I have no doubt of it. This character represents the particle 
of similitude, “as, like ;”’ and as such corresponds to the Hebrew 3, and there 
was no other slender, upright form of K; while the water plant, X 2, was such a 
form of X. I may add, that a character like the determinative sign in fig. 171, 
and not unlike the hierographic form of this letter: a character which I take to 
be an abbreviated form of it, is used as initial, with the /eg, the semicircle, and its 
VOL. XXI. Q2r 
