70 Bird Notes from the Nile. 



No one who has looked at the hiero- 

 glyphic writings can have helped re- 

 marking the artistic way in which the 

 signs that take the form of birds are 

 drawn. During the Early Empire they 

 were even better than in the later periods. 



In an inscription on an early mummy- 

 case which we found in the Gebel Goubat 

 el Hawa, the birds' signs are drawn in 

 a wonderfully painstaking way. The owl 

 (Em), for instance, whenever it occurs, is 

 carefully coloured with a brown back and 

 neatly speckled breast ; while the same 

 letter in a late Ptolemaic cartonnage 

 found in the same hill is merely indicated 

 by clever but roughly done lines. 



The following are birds' signs in general 

 use : — 



^ ^ k ^ '^ "^ 



a u m hr xu clc 



^ ^ ^ % ^ ^ 



mt ba sa nh 



sr ur 



qm tiu pa ta kma mi 



Ag 



