HEXACHORD. 



HIEROGLYPHICS. 



G82 



crystalline derivative from creasote, obtained by the action of hy dro 

 chloric acid. 



HEXACHORD (t(, six, and xp8^, a gut, a string), a name given by 

 the ancient Greeks to a lyre of six strings ; also a scale of six sounds. 

 In what is denominated ' the System of Guido," musical sounds are 

 divided into three scales, named Hf.cac/wnls. The first, from c to A, 

 is called the yatural hexachord : the second, from G to K, the Durum ; 

 and the third, from P to D (the B flattened), the Molle. To the notes 

 of each scale are assigned, as names, the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, tol, la. 

 This perplexing and irrational system, which has been well designated 

 Crux tenellortim, ingeniorum, is now utterly discarded. 

 HEXAGON, a figure of six sides. [REGULAR FIGURES.] 

 HEXAHEDRON, a solid of six faces. [CUBE ; REGULAR SOLIDS.] 

 HEXA'METER (t%, six, nirpov, measure) is the most important 

 form of dactylic verse. [DACTTLICS.] It consists of six feet, either 

 dactyls or spondees, with no limit in their arrangements, except that 

 the fifth is usually a dactyl, and the sixth invariably a spondee. Great 

 part of the beauty of a long poem written in this measure depends on 

 the varied cadences, which may be produced by varying the csesura. 

 [CJESURA.] The most usual places are the middle of the third and the 

 middle of the fourth foot : of these, the former is called by prosodians 

 the pe-nthemimeral ; the latter, the hephthemimeral caiura ; as, for 

 example : 



Vix e conspectu | Siculac telluris in altnm. 



NOD aliter quern qui utlvcrso | vix flumlne Icmbum. 



That which is called the bucolic cresura, at the end of the fourth foot 

 hardly seems to deserve special mention, being in no respect essential 

 to the harmony of the verse, and invariably accompanied by one of the 

 two before mentioned. These are essential ; and one or other of them 

 is always observed in well-constructed verse, except in rare cases where 

 the omission is intentional, with a view to some special effect. For 

 the niceties of the measure, see the treatise of Hermann, ' De Metris,' 

 lib ii. 32. 



HEXAPLA, the plural of iair\ovt, which means " six-fold," was an 

 edition of the Scriptures of the Old Testament prepared by Origen, 

 which exhibited, in addition to the original Hebrew text, six Greek 

 versions in as many parallel columns ; namely, .the Septuagint, that of 

 Aquila, that of Syramachus, that of Theodotion, one found at Jericho, 

 and one found at Nicopolis in Epirus. It also comprehended a seventh 

 version of the Psalms. The Hebrew text was besides given both in 

 Hebrew and in Greek characters ; so that, properly speaking, there were 

 eight columns in all, whence the work is sometimes called Origen's 

 Octapla. [BIBLE ; SEPTUAGIXT ; and ORIGEXES and THEODOTIOX, in 

 Bioo. Div.J 



HKXYL. [CAPROIC ALCOHOL, ffexyl.] 



HEXYLENE (C,,H la ), Oleene, CaproiUne. The olefeue of caproic 

 alcohol. It is obtained by distilling bydroleic acid, and is also pro- 

 bably formed by the destructive distillation of many other fatty 

 bodies. It is a colourless very mobile liquid, lighter than water, 

 and possessing an arsenical odour. It is scarcely soluble in water, but 

 easily so in alcohol and ether. Hexylene boils at 131 Fahr., and its 

 vapour appears to exercise a deleterious influence upon animals. Birds 

 which have inhaled it for some time fall dead. 



HIERO'S FOUNTAIN, a philosophical toy illustrating some hydro- 

 dynamic details. It consists of three vessels connected by two tubes. 

 Water descending from .the top vessel, drives the air from the bottom 

 into the middle vessel and compresses it, so that by its elasticity it 

 forces the water in this vessel up a jet. It is only another form of 

 compressed air-fountain. 



IHKROGLYPHICS, a compound Greek word, meaning "sacred 

 engravings," generally applied to the representations of animal and 

 other forms sculptured on the monuments of Egypt, by means of 

 which the Egyptians expressed their language. The ancient Greek 

 authors call this mode of writing hieroglyphic, or hieroyraphic, and 

 attribute its invention to Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes. According to 

 these authorities, it was the most ancient mode of writing known to 

 mankind. It was called by the Egyptians Neter tu, or " sacred words," 

 and was particularly used in afl inscriptions relating to the gods, 

 temples, and public events. Above 1000 different symbols appear on 

 examination of the monuments to have been employed, and future 

 observations will probably still further augment their number. These 

 are arranged with great precision on the monuments, generally in hori- 

 zontal or vertical lines, with all the animals and symbols of the same 

 inscription facing in the same direction, whether to the right or to the 

 left ; sometimes, however, they are placed in the area, or field, and 

 dispersed amongst the figures or scenes they are intended to illustrate. 

 They have been divided into six classes : ] , sculptured and not painted; 

 2,tln>se which are sculptured and painted ; 3, linear, or drawn in out- 

 line ; 4, drawn in outline and painted ; 5, po/ycltrome, or those painted 

 with many colours; 6, monochrome, or those painted in one colour. 

 Those carved on stone are generally executed in a peculiar kind of 

 sculpture, called cavo riliero, in raised relief below the surface, but 

 sometimes in bas relief. The linear hieroglyphics are drawn with a 

 carbonaceous black or a vermilion red ink, on papyri, linen, slices of 

 stone, wood, and other materials. Hieroglyphics appear in use on the 

 walls of the earliest tombs, and even scrawled on the blocks of stone of 

 the groat Pyramid built by Cheops, and they continued to be employed 



till the time of Caracalla, during a space of almost 3000 years ; but 

 subsequently were superseded by a more cursive writing called the 

 Demotic ; and finally, on the triumph of Christianity, by the modern 

 Coptic. Some scattered notices of their general nature and the mean- 

 ing of a few symbols are given by Diodorus, Chicremon, Clement of 

 Alexandria, and Porphyiy ; arid a special dissertation upon them, 

 written by Horus Apollo, or Horapollo, of Phenebethis, A.D. 500, 

 has been handed down ; but a knowledge of them was little cultivated 

 by the Greeks and Romans, even those who lived in Egypt itself. 

 From the 10th century to the 16th century, all knowledge of them 

 totally disappeared ; and on the revival of learning, the task of 

 decipherment and interpretation was vainly attempted, till the dis- 

 covery of the Rosetta stone in 1799 gave a clue to their interpretation. 

 This monument, found on the site of a temple dedicated by King 

 Necho to the god Atum, which is a trigrammatical inscription in 

 hieroglyphics, Demotic or cursive writing, and Greek, recites the decrees 

 of a synod of priests assembled at Memphis, A.D. 196, in honour 

 of Ptolemy V., their benefactor, and declares that the decree js 

 ordered to be engraved in these three writings. After some feeble, 

 although not unsuccessful, attempts to decipher the demotic by De 

 Sacy and Akerblad in 1802, Young, in 1814, was the first to discover 

 from the name of Ptolemy on this stone, and that of Berenice on a 

 doorway in the south quarter of Karnak, that certain hieroglyphics 

 were employed to represent sounds, not ideas, as had been hitherto 

 conjectured. The removal by Bankes of a small obelisk from Philso, 

 erected by the priests in honour of Ptolemy Euergetes II. and Cleo- 

 patra, on the pedestal of which they had inscribed a Greek inscription, 

 enabled Champollion in 1822 to compare the names of Cleopatra and 

 Ptolemy, and, correcting some of the errors of Young, to extend the 

 alphabet, and lay the foundation for the future decipherment and 

 interpretation of the hieroglyphics. It was seen, from a comparison 

 of these names and the recurrence of the same hieroglyphics in the 

 same places, as if they were used as sounds, that this was their true 

 employment ; and by an extension of the decipherment, the names and 

 titles of the Ptolemies, Roman emperors, and native monarchs, were 

 readily discovered. 



Since the time of Chauipolliou, who published a Grammar in 1836, 

 and Dictionary of Hieroglyphics in 1841, the study of the hieroglyphics 

 has been pursued by Rosellini, Salrolini, Leemans, Lepsius, Bragsch, 

 De Rouge, Birch, Goodwin, Hiucks, and others. 



The general results of these inquiries have shown that all hiero- 

 glyphical inscriptions, from the most remote to the latest periods, 

 consist of two classes of characters, the first called by the Egyptologists 

 ideographs, or symbols representing ideas, not sounds; and phone tics, 

 or hieroglyphics employed as syllables, or letters of the alphabet. The 

 great body of the inscriptions are composed of phonetics, at least to 

 the extent of four-fifths of each entire text ; and they are easily distin- 

 guished by then- constant recurrence. They are, however, fewer in 

 number than the itlcogrttji/i*. 



These ideographs are divided into two classes : 1. The ideographs 

 proper, or those which represent only one idea ; as a seated man having 

 the head of an ibis, to mean the god Thoth or Hermes ; a wolf to 

 represent that animal ; and a bundle of flax to represent flax : these 

 are direct imitations. 2. Those of the kind called by Clement tropic, 

 or enigmatic, or metonymes, express the idea by less direct means, as a 

 smoking pail, to signify milk ; a pelican seizing a fish, to signify fishing; 

 an ape, to express anger, on account of the irritability of the animal ; 

 and a jackal, cunning, on account of its crafty nature ; an ostrich- 

 feather, to signify truth, because all the feathers of the wing of that 

 bird were supposed to be of equal length. These ideographs are often 

 preceded by a group of phonetics, which spell the sound of the word, the 

 sense of which they are intended to convey : thus, the wolf is preceded 

 by a hare, A, a line of water, N, and a basin, s H, spelling Ansh, "wolf;" 

 and the jackal by the back of a chair, s, and chisel, B, spelling sab, 

 " crafty." These direct ideographs are the oldest part of the system, 

 the remains of the primitive picture writing of the nation : about 700 

 have been found. 



The determinatives form a sudivision of the ideographs, and are tho.u 

 symbols employed to represent more than one idea. They are exten- 

 sively employed and repeated in the inscriptions. Some of these 

 determinatives are employed in twenty similar senses, others convey 

 two or three similar ideas. Their use is to abridge the too copious 

 employment of ideographs, and to render clear the ambiguity of 

 phonetic groups. Thus, the inn's disk, represented as a circle with 

 a dot in the centre, signified all ideas connected with that luminary, 

 as the sun, year, month, hour, day, night, light, darkness, orbit, 

 festival ; an ureetts signified any goddess in the Pantheon, a seal-ring, 

 to shut or to enclose. These determinatives, like the ideographs, are 

 preceded by groups of phonetics, spelling the sound of the ideas they 

 convey thus, the sun's disc has before it phonetics reading aten, when 

 it means a disc, and tar when it means " time." They determine in 

 fact the genus of the idea of the phonetic group, and are often used 

 instead, or in place of their corresponding ideographs, which are 

 pictures so elaborate of the idea as to be unsuited for general purposes, 

 and only fit for the most magnificently executed public monuments. 

 Sometimes two determinatives, or an ideograph and determinative, are 

 used after a phonetic group. 



These determinatives in fact resemble the 214 keys or radicles of 



