218 RIGHTHANDEDNESS. 



The materials in use by the scribe necessarily affect tbe forms ia 

 use. So soon as the reed or quill, with the coloured liquid or pigment, 

 took the place of the chisel, or style, and the papyrus was substituted 

 for the stone tablet or metal plate, a complete revolution followed ia 

 the form of phonetic or alphabetic signs. The process may be seen in 

 tbe modern student's first efforts at writing Greek, witb the gradual 

 adoption of tied letters, and the requisite modifications of intractable 

 characters, such as thelambda and cM, which do not readily conform to 

 the slope or fashion of modern epistolograpby. So soon as the Egyp- 

 tians adopted the reed and papyrus, the hieratic writing began to be 

 modified in this fashion ; and when it passed into tbe demotic hand- 

 writing, the same influences were at work which control the modern, 

 penman in the slope, direction and force of his stroke, with one impor- 

 tant exception. To the last their enchorial or demotic writing was 

 mainly executed in detached characters, and does not, therefore, consti- 

 tute a true current hand-writing, such as in our own continuous pen- 

 manship leaves no room for doubt as to the hand by which it was 

 executed. Any sufficiently ambidextrous penman, by applying the 

 practical test of attempting to copy a piece of modern current writing 

 with either hand, would determine beyond all question its right-handed 

 execution. But no such certain result is found on applying the same 

 test to the Egyptian demotic. I have ascertained by experiment on 

 two of the Louvre demotic MSS. and a portion of a Turin papyrus, 

 that they can be copied with nearly equal dexterity with either hand. 

 Some of the characters are more easily and naturally executed, without 

 lifting the pen, with the left hand than the right. Others again, in 

 the slope and the direction of the thickening of the stroke, suggest a 

 righ't-handed execution ; and this is more apparent in some other exam- 

 ples both of hieratic and demotic writing. But habit in the forming 

 of the characters, as in writing Greek, or Arabic, would so speedily 

 overcome any difficulty either way, that I feel assured no habitually 

 left-handed writer would find any difficulty in acquiring the unmodified 

 demotic hand ; whereas no English penman compelled to resort to tbe 

 left hand in executing the ordinary current transcription, however 

 great mi^ht be his acquired dexterity, could fail to indicate the change, 

 in the slope, the stroke, and the formation of the letters. 



So far as pure hieroglyphics are concerned, especially as most com- 

 monly executed in mural inscriptions, they frequently present features 

 calculated to suggest the idea that the Egyptians were a left-handed 



