THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 39 



was SO familiar with the demotic characters that notes for his own 

 use were often written with that alphabet. It is said that some of 

 these notes fell into the hands of a French Academician, who pub- 

 lished them as an original Egyptian text of the Antonine period. In 

 his paper at the Academy, he gave readings of many names, and of 

 some other words, and shewed the hieroglyphic alphabet to be 

 phonetic, and in some cases syllabic. On the same night of his 

 reading at the Academy, the discoveries announced in his paper were 

 communicated to Louis XVIII, who, as a mark of esteem, sent 

 ChampoUion a snuff-box on which was the royal monogram set in 

 diamonds. That was a princely gift ; though one he more highly 

 prized came in the words of Chateaubriand : "His discoveries will 

 " have the durability of the immortal monuments he has made 

 ^' known to us." 



All the signs used in Hieroglyphic writing are pictures good or 

 bad of actual objects. A sign may stand alone as a picture to 

 represent the object meant, or it may be placed at the end of a 

 word, which is the phonetic name of an object. Signs are also used 

 figuratively. A circle means the sun ; and figuratively it means a 

 day ; a vase tilted so that liquid is pouring from it signifies a priest ; 

 the ostrich feather means justice, and the leg of a man in a trap 

 means deceit. Another use for signs is as " determinatives." That 

 use is common mostly after proper names. Thus the names of 

 birds are followed by the picture of a bird ; of fur bearing animals 

 by a figure shewing a bit of the pelt of an animal and its tail. But 

 in all inscriptions, most of the signs are phonetic, and the sign for 

 each sound is some familiar object. Thus moulag is the Egyptian 

 word for owl, and an owl is the sign for the m sound, the first sound 

 in the name of that bird. Some signs represent syllables, as the 

 crux ansaia, the handled cross, in ankh, life. Rawlinson says there 

 are at least a hundred signs of this kind. Numbers from one to 

 nine are written with a short vertical stroke for each digit, those 

 from four to nine being written in two rows, one over the other. 

 Occasionally Hieroglyphic writing is found in vertical columns, but 

 it is generally in horizontal lines, to be read from left to right if the 

 signs face to the left, and from right to left if they face to the right ; 

 addition of a pointed ellipse, an open mouth means the sign is used 

 phonetically. 



The grammatical structure of the language has been partly 



