174 The Marquis Di Spineto on the Zimb of Bruce, 



bol of an obedient people, but must necessarily be the symbol 

 of Lower Egypt and the valley of the Nile. Many reasons 

 concur in favour of this surmise. In thejirst place, the num- 

 ber of wings : the bee has four, the insect at the top of the 

 cartouche only two. In the second place, the figure of the 

 body, which resembles more that of the Zimb given by Bruce 

 than that of the bee. Thirdly, the position of the antennae. 

 In the bee they diverge, in the Zimb they are parallel and lie 

 straight forward, which last position, in the hieroglyphics, has 

 been changed into a vertical position, for the evident sake of 

 saving room. In addition to these considerations it may be 

 noted, that as far as I have been able to ascertain by monuments 

 hitherto discovered, the figure of this insect seems to have 

 been introduced among the hieroglyphics describing royal 

 titles, during the reigns of the Pharaohs of the eighteenth dy- 

 nasty, that is, after the expulsion of the Hyk-shos ; and there- 

 fore, as the Zimb was confined within, and never went beyond 

 the limits of the black earth in the valley of the Nile, its 

 figure might have been reasonably taken as the symbol of 

 Egypt in general, or perhaps more properly of Lower Egypt, 

 the place of residence of the Hyk-shos, and thus offer to the 

 Pharaohs the boast of ruling over that country, which at 

 one time was wrested from them by these shepherd intruders. 

 That the Pharaohs felt a pride of this sort, is evident from 

 the introduction of one of these Hyk-shos, in the most abject 

 position and submissive attitude, in every one of the monu- 

 ments of triumph of each and all the Pharaohs who succeeded 

 Mishra-Thoutmosy, the first prince of the eighteenth dynasty, 

 who had expelled them from the country. 



To this original cause of boasting, the Exodus of the Israel- 

 ites may have added another; for as the fly was the fourth 

 plague with which God visited Egypt, so it might gratify the 

 vanity of the Pharaohs to exult at ruling over that country, 

 which at one time was so infested by that insect, on account 

 of the hated Israelites. That such hatred existed, is evi- 

 dent from the inspection of historical monuments, in which 

 the figure of a Jew is invariably seen in an humble and de- 

 jected position, either among the prisoners following the car 

 of the Pharaohs, or serving as a foot-stool to their throne. 



Upon these considerations, I think that the figure of the 

 insect at the top of the cartouches above mentioned, is not that 

 of a bee, but of the Zimb of Bruce, and that, together with the 

 crooked line which precedes it, it means, not king of an obedient 

 people, but King of Egypt, or, more specifically, King of Lower 

 Egypt. Nor are we to be surprised at M. Champollion taking 



