172 
left, through the diagonals of its own system, and similarly with respect 
to W,. Hence there arises a slight ambiguity respecting the strains, as 
they may go in either way, or partly in one, partly in the other. If, 
however, the girder be strong enough to sustain the strain, in whichever 
way it is conveyed, the safety of the structure is secured, and prac- 
tically a very slight difference in the resulting strains ensues which- 
ever method of calculation is adopted. 
MONDAY, JUNE 27, 1859. 
James Henruorn Topp, D. D., President, in the Chair. 
J. R. Krvanay, M.D., read an account of the discovery of certain wooden 
implements, found in connexion with the bones of Megaceros Hibernicus, 
in a marl-pit in the county of Clare. 
J. B. Jukes, M. R. I. A., called attention to the recent observations 
made by Mr. Prestwich and others, in England and France, the tendency 
of which is to establish the coexistence of the human race with some of 
the races of animals now extinct, such as mammoths and bears. 
The PresIpEnt read a paper— 
ON THE GROUNDS FOR SUPPOSING THAT THE NAME OF THE TRIBE OF ISSACHAR 
OCCURS IN EGYPTIAN INSCRIPTIONS. BY THE REV. EDWARD HINCKS, D.D. 
Tue alleged occurrence of the name of Issachar, as of a people in Pales- 
tine, in the inscriptions of Rameses III., has been used as an argument 
against the opinion so generally entertamed by recent Egyptologists, 
that the Exodus did not take place till near the end of the nineteenth , 
dynasty. In the present paper I propose to consider, without reference 
to the chronological question, whether this reading of the name be ad- 
missible. As respects the latter part of the name, I cannot suppose that 
any objection can be made. It concludes with a double, or sometimes 
a single K and R. Before these we have an unfledged bird; and the 
question to be considered is, whether this can represent Jss, or any 
sound which can have passed into Jss; for though this be the modern 
pronunciation, grounded on the Masoretic points, it may not have been 
theZancient pronunciation. 
I will endeavour to prove the two following propositions :— 
Ist. In certain cases, of which this is one, it is admissible to supply a 
vowel before the consonantal character which begins a word. 2nd. 
The value of the unjledged bird was the double consonant ST. If these 
propositions be established, nothing more will be required to justify the 
reading Istakkar, or Istakar, from which Issakar naturally flows. As 
to the first of these propositions, I must begin with stating that since 
the publication of my paper ‘‘On the Number, Names, and Powers of the 
Letters of the Hieroglyphic Alphabet,” I have been led to alter my views 
very considerably. So far, however, from returning to the old views, 
from which I there expressed my dissent, I have gone much further 
from them. I am now satisfied that the Greek transcriptions of the 
Ptolemaic age and the Coptic equivalents of hieroglyphic words are 
still less to be depended on than I then supposed, and that the Egyptian 
a 
