Bunsen's Acgyptens Stelle, Bd. I., p. 240, and Thierbach, on hiero αὐτίκα οἱ παρ' Αἰγυπτίοις παιδευόμενοι πρῶτον μὲν πάντων τὴν Clement of Αἰγυπτίων γραμμάτων μέθοδον ἐκμανθάνουσι τὴν ἐπιστολογραφικὴν Alexandria καλουμένην, δευτέραν δὲ τὴν ἱερατικὴν, ᾗ χρῶνται οἱ ἱερογραμματεῖς, glyphics. ὑστάτην δὲ καὶ τελευταίαν τὴν ἱερογλυφικὴν, ἧς ἡ μέν ἐστι διὰ τῶν πρώτων στοιχείων κυριολογικὴ, ἡ δὲ συμβολική. τῆς δὲ συμβολικῆς ἡ μὲν κυριολογεῖται κατὰ μίμησιν, ἡ δ' ὥσπερ τροπικῶς γράφεται, ἡ δὲ ἄντικρυς ἀλληγορείται κατά τινας αἰνιγμούς, ἥλιον γοῦν γράψαι βουλόμενοι κύκλον ποιοῦσι, σελήνην δὲ σχῆμα μηνοειδὲς κατὰ τὸ κυριολογούμενον εἶδος, τροπικῶς δὲ κατ' οἰκειότητα μετάγοντες καὶ μετατι θέντες, τὰ δ ̓ ἐξαλλάττοντες, τὰ δὲ πολλαχῶς μετασχηματίζοντες χαράτο τουσιν. Τοὺς γοῦν τῶν βασιλέων ἐπαίνους θεολογουμένοις μύθοις παραδιδόντες αναγράφουσι διὰ τῶν ἀναγλύφων, τοῦ δὲ κατὰ τοὺς αἰνιγμοὺς τρίτου εἴδους δεῖγμα ἔστω τόδε. τὰ μὲν γὰρ τῶν ἄλλων ἄστρων διὰ τὴν πορείαν τὴν λοξὴν ὄφεων σώμασιν ἀπείκαζον, τὸν δὲ ἥλιον τῷ τοῦ κανθάρου, ἐπειδὴ κυκλοτερὲς ἐκ τῆς βοείας ὄνθου σχῆμα πλασάμενος ἀντιπρόσωπος κυλίνδει. φασὶ δὲ καὶ ἐξάμηνον μὲν ὑπὸ γῆς, θάτερον δὲ τοῦ ἔτους τμῆμα τὸ ζῷον τοῦτο ὑπὲρ γῆς διαιτάσθαι, σπερμαίνειν τε εἰς τὴν σφαῖραν καὶ γεννᾶν, καὶ θῆλυν κάνθαρον μὴ γίνεσθαι. 1 tion of Clement. “For example, those that are educated among the Transla Egyptians first of all learn that system of Egyptian charac- extract ters which is styled EPISTOLOGRAPHIC; secondly, the HIERA- from TIC, which the sacred scribes employ; lastly and finally the HIEROGLYPHIC. The hieroglyphic sometimes speaks plainly by means of the letters of the alphabet, and sometimes uses symbols, and when it uses symbols, it sometimes (α) speaks plainly by imitation, and sometimes (b) describes in a figurative way, and sometimes (c) simply says one thing for another in accordance with certain secret rules. Thus (a) if they desire to write sun or moon, they make a circle or a crescent in plain imitation of the form. And when (b) they describe figuratively (by transfer and transposition without violating the natural meaning of words), they completely alter some things and make manifold changes in the form of others. Thus, they hand 1 Clem. Alex., ed. Dindorf, t. III. Strom. lib. v. §§ 20, 21, pp. 17, 18, down the praises of their kings in myths about the gods which they write up in relief. Let this be an example of the third form (c) in accordance with the secret rules. While they represent the stars generally by snakes' bodies, because their course is crooked, they represent the sun by the body of a beetle, for the beetle moulds a ball from cattle dung and rolls it before him. And they say that this animal lives under ground for six months, and above ground for the other portion of the year, and that it deposits its seed in this globe and there engenders offspring, and that no female beetle exists." From the above we see that Clement rightly stated that the Egyptians had three kinds of writing:-epistolographic, hieratic and hieroglyphic. The epistolographic is that kind which is now called "demotic," and which in the early days of hieroglyphic decipherment was called "enchorial." The hicratic is the kind commonly found on papyri. The hieroglyphic kind is described as, I. cyriologic, that is to say, by means of figurative phonetic characters, e.g., emsuḥ, "crocodile," and II. symbolic, that is to say, by actual representations of objects, e.g., "goose," "bee," and so on. The symbolic division is subdivided into three parts: I. cyriologic by imitation, e.g.,, a vase with water flowing from it represented a "libation"; II. tropical, e.g., ~, a crescent moon to represent "month," M, a reed and palette to represent "writing" or "scribe"; and III. enigmatic, e.g., , a beetle, to represent the "sun." In modern Egyptian Grammars the matter is stated more simply, and we see that hieroglyphic signs are used in two ways: I. Ideographic, II. Phonetic. mău, "water," is an instance of the first method, and m-s-u-ḥ, is an instance of the second. Ideographic signs are used as determinatives, and are either ideographic or generic. Thus after mau, “cat,” a cat is placed, and is an ideographic determinative; but T, heaven with a star in it, written after kerḥ, is a 1 Champollion, Précis, p. 278. generic determinative. Phonetic signs are either Alphabetic as A a, b, k, or Syllabic, as men, chen, etc. Porphyry the Philosopher, who died about A.D. 305, says of Pythagoras:1 hiero Καὶ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ μὲν τοῖς ἱερεῦσι συνῆν καὶ τὴν σοφίαν Pythaἐξέμαθε, καὶ τὴν Αἰγυπτίων φωνήν, γραμμάτων δὲ τρισσὰς goras and διαφοράς, ἐπιστολογραφικῶν τε καὶ ἱερογλυφικῶν καὶ συμ- glyphics. βολικῶν, τῶν μὲν κοινολογουμένων κατὰ μίμησιν, τῶν δὲ ἀλληγορουμένων κατά τινας αἰνιγμούς. "And in Egypt he lived with the priests and learnt their wisdom and the speech of the Egyptians and three sorts of writing, epistolographic and hieroglyphic and symbolic, which sometimes speak in the common way by imitation and sometimes describe one thing by another in accordance with certain secret rules." Here it seems that Porphyry copied Clement inaccurately. Thus he omits all mention of the Egyptian writing called "hieratic," and of the subdivision of hieroglyphic called "cyriologic," and of the second subdivision of the symbolic called "tropic." The following table, based on Letronne, will make the views about hieroglyphic Letronne's writing held by the Greeks plain :— Herodotus, Diodorus and the inscription of Rosetta divide δημοτικά and δημώδη by Herodotus and Clement, 1. The common, yxúpia by the inscriptions of Rosetta, ἐπιστολογραφικά by Clement of Alexandria and Porphyry. called Egyptian writing II. The sacred, into two divisions divided by Clement into 1. Hieratic, or the writing of the priests. a. Cyriologic, by means of the first summary. 2. Hieroglyphic on hiero The next writer of importance on hieroglyphics is Horapollo Horapollo, who towards the close of the IVth century of our glyphics. era composed a work called Ιερογλυφικά; this book was translated into Greek by one Philip, of whom nothing is known. Wiedemann thinks that it was originally written in Coptic, which, in the middle ages, was usually called 1 Porphyry, De Vita Pythagorae, cd. Didot, § 11, p. 89, at the foot. writers on hiero 'Egyptian," and not in ancient Egyptian. In this work are given the explanations of a number of ideographs which occur, for the most part, in Ptolemaic inscriptions; but, like the list of those given by Chaeremon, no phonetic values of the signs are given. Nevertheless the list is of considerable interest. The best edition of Horapollo is that of Conrad Leemans, but the text was edited in a handy form, with an English translation and notes by Samuel Sharpe and Dr. Birch, by J. Cory, in 1840. In more modern times the first writer at any length on Mediaeval hieroglyphics was Athanasius Kircher, the author of some ponderous works in which he pretended to have found the glyphics. key to the hieroglyphic inscriptions, and to translate them. Though a man of great learning, it must be plainly said that, judged by scholars of to-day, he would be considered an impostor. In his works on Coptic there are, no doubt, many interesting facts, but mixed with them is such an amount of nonsense that Jablonski says touching one of his Jablonski. statements, "Verum hic ut in aliis plurimis fucum lectoribus fecit Jesuita ille, et fumum vendidit"; from the same writer also, Kircher's arrogant assertions called forth the remark, Kircherus, in quo semper plus inest ostentationis, quam solidae eruditionis." It is impossible to understand what grounds Kircher had for his statements and how he arrived at his results; as for his translations, they have nothing correct in them. Here is one taken at random from Oedipus Kircher and 1 Aegyptische Geschichte, p. 151. The sepulchre of Gordian was inscribed in Egyptian. "Gordiano sepulchrum milites apud Circeium castrum fecerunt in finibus Persidis, titulum hujus modi addentes et Graecis, et Latinis, et Persicis, et Judaicis, et Aegyptiacis literis, ut ab omnibus legeretur. Erasmus, Hist. Rom. Scriptorum, Basle, 1533, p. 312, at the top. Horapollinis Niloi Hieroglyphica. edidit, diversorum codicum recenter collatorum, priorumque editionum varias lectiones et versionem latinam subjunxit, adnotationem, item hieroglyphicorum imagines et indices adjecit C. L. Amstelod, 1835. 3 Obeliscus Pamphilius, . . . Ilieroglyphicis involuta Symbolis, detecta e tenebris in lucem asseritur, Rome, 1650, fol. Oedipus Aegyptiacus, hoc est, universalis hieroglyphicae veterum doctrinae, temporum injuria obolitae instauratio. Rome, 1652-54. Tomi I-IV, fol. 1643. 4 Prodromus Coptus, Rome, 1636. Lingua Aegyptiaca restituta. 5 Jablonski, Opuscula, t. I. ed. Water, 1804, pp. 157, 211. Rome, Aegyptiacus, t. III, p. 431, where he gives a translation of an inscription (A) printed on the plate between pp. 428 and 429. The hieroglyphics are written on a Ptah-Seker-Osiris figure and read : "Saith Osiris, at the head of the underworld, god great, lord of and his translation runs:-"Vitale providi Numinis dominium, quadruplicem Mundani liquoris substantiam dominio confert Osiridis, cujus unà cum Mendesio foecundi Numinis dominio, benefica virtute influente, omnia quae in Mundo sunt, vegetantur, animantur, conservantur." Other writers on hieroglyphics whose works Kircher consulted were John Peter Bolzanius Valerianus,' and Mercati, but no good results followed their investigations. In the year 1770 Joseph de Guignes determined the existence of groups of characters De Guighaving determinatives, and four years later he published his Zoëga. Mémoire, in which he tried to prove that the epistolographic and symbolic characters of the Egyptians were to be found in the Chinese characters, and that the Chinese nation was nothing but an Egyptian colony. In 1797 Zoëga made a step in the right direction, and came to the conclusion that the hieroglyphics were letters and that the cartouches contained royal names. A few years later Silvestre de Sacy published a Silvestre nes and de Sacy and Aker 1 Hieroglyphica, seu de sacris Acgyptiorum aliarumque gentium litteris blad. Commentatorium libri VII., duobus aliis ab eruditissimo viro annexis, etc., Basil., 1556. 2 Degli Obelischi di Roma, Rome, 1589. * Essai sur le moyen de parvenir à la lecture et à l'intelligence des Hiéroglyphes égyptiens. (In Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, t. XXXIV. pp. 1-56.) 4 Ibid., t. XXXIX. p. 1 ff. De Usu et Origine Obeliscorum, Rome, 1797, fol., p. 465. |