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son of the Sun, Rameses, beloved of Amen-Rā." OEOYÉVVNTOS

κτιστὴς τῆς οἰκουμένης = 11777911

"born of

the gods, possessor of the two lands" (ie., the world). 'O EUTÒs ἐπ ̓ ἀληθείας δεσπότης διαδήματος, τὴν Αἴγυπτον δοξάσας κεκτημένος, ὁ ἀγλαοποιήσας Ηλίου πόλιν =

୪ "[the mighty bull], resting upon

Law, lord of diadems, protector of Egypt, making splendid
Heliopolis with monuments.” Ἥλιος θεὸς μέγας δεσπότης

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machis, the great god, lord of heaven," πλnpwσas Tòv veÒV TOÛ φοίνικος ἀγαθῶν, ᾧ οἱ θεοὶ ζωῆς χρόνον ἐδωρήσαντο

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filling the temple of the bennu (phoenix) with his splendours, may the gods give to him life like the Sun for ever," etc.

The Flaminian obelisk, from which the Egyptian passages Flaminian given above are taken, was brought from Heliopolis to Rome obelisk. by Augustus, and placed in the Circus Maximus,' whence it was dug out; it now stands in the Piazza del Popolo at Rome, where it was set up by Pope Sixtus V. in 1589. This obelisk was originally set up by Seti I., whose inscriptions occupy the middle column of the north, south, and west sides; the other columns of hieroglyphics record the names and titles of Rameses II. who, in this case, appropriated the obelisk of his father, just as he did that of Thothmes III. The obelisk was found broken into three pieces, and in order to render it capable of sustaining itself, three palms' length was cut from the base. The texts have been published by Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, t. iii. p. 213; by Ungarelli, Interpretatio Obeliscorum Urbis, Rome, 1842, p. 65, sqq.,

1 Qui autem notarum textus obelisco incisus est veteri, quem videmus in Circo etc. Ammianus Marcellinus, XVII. 4, § 17. It seems to be referred to in Pliny, XXXVI. 29.

2 For a comparative table of obelisks standing in 1840, see Bonomi, Notes on Obelisks, in Trans. Royal Soc. Lit., Vol. I. Second Series, p. 158.

Cham

estimate of

statements

plate 2; and by Bonomi, who drew them for a paper on this obelisk by the Rev. G. Tomlinson in Trans. Royal Soc. Lit., Vol. I. Second Series, p. 176 ff. For an account of this obelisk, see Zoëga, De Origine et Usu Obeliscorum, Rome, 1797, p. 92.

The next Greek writer whose statements on Egyptian hieroglyphics are of value is Clement of Alexandria, who flourished about A.D. 191-220. According to Champollion, pollion's "un seul auteur grec,.... ..a démêlé et signalé, dans Clement's l'écriture égyptienne sacrée, les élémens phonétiques, lesquels on hiero- en sont, pour ainsi dire, le principe vital1 . . . . . Clément glyphics. d'Alexandrie s'est, lui seul, occasionnellement attaché à en donner une idée claire; et ce philosophe chrétien était, bien plus que tout autre, en position d'en être bien instruit. Lorsque mes recherches et l'étude constante des monuments égyptiens m'eurent conduit aux résultats précédemment exposés, je dus revenir sur ce passage de Saint Clément d'Alexandrie, que j'ai souvent cité, pour savoir si, à la faveur des notions que j'avais tirées d'un examen soutenu des inscriptions hieroglyphiques, le texte de l'auteur grec ne deviendrait pas plus intelligible qu'il ne l'avait paru jusquelà. J'avoue que ses termes me semblèrent alors si positifs et si clairs, et les idées qu'il renferme si exactement conformes à ma théorie de l'écriture hiéroglyphique, que je dus craindre aussi de me livrer à une illusion et à un entraînement dont tout me commandait de me défier.”2 From the above it will be seen what a high value Champollion placed on the statements concerning the hieroglyphics by Clement, and they have, in consequence, formed the subject of various works by eminent authorities. In his Précis (p. 328), Champollion gives the extract from Clement with a Latin translation and remarks

by Letronne.3 Dulaurier in his Examen d'un passage des Stromates de Saint Clément d'Alexandrie, Paris, 1833, again published the passage and gave many explanations of words in it, and commented learnedly upon it. (See also

1 Précis du Système hieroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens, Paris, 1824, p. 321. Précis, p. 327.

See also Euvres Choisies, t. I. pp. 237-254.

Bunsen's Aegyptens Stelle, Bd. I., p. 240, and Thierbach,
Erklärung auf das Aegyptische Schriftwesen, Erfurt, 1846.)
The passage is as follows:-

Alexandria

on hiero

αὐτίκα οἱ παρ' Αἰγυπτίοις παιδευόμενοι πρῶτον μὲν πάντων τὴν Clement of Αἰγυπτίων γραμμάτων μέθοδον ἐκμανθάνουσι τὴν ἐπιστολογραφικὴν 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 χαράττουσιν. 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 ὄψεων σώμασιν ἀπείκαζον, τὸν δὲ ἥλιον τῷ τοῦ κανθάρου, ἐπειδὴ κυκλοτερὲς ἐκ τῆς βοείας ὄνθου σχήμα πλασάμενος ἀντιπρόσωπος κυλίνδει. φασὶ δὲ καὶ ἑξάμηνον μὲν ὑπὸ γῆς, θάτερον δὲ τοῦ ἔτους τμῆμα τὸ ζῷον τοῦτο ὑπὲρ γῆς διαιτᾶσθαι, 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,

Three kinds of Egyptian writing.

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.,, crescent moon to represent "month," M, a reed and palette to represent "writing" or "scribe"; and III. enigmatic, e.g.,

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a

, 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. mẫu, “water," is an instance of the first method, and m-s-u-h, 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 A kerḥ, is a

1 Champollion, Précis, p. 278.

generic determinative. Phonetic signs are either Alphabetic as A a, Jb, 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, I. The common,yxúpia by the inscriptions of Rosetta, ἐπιστολογραφικά by Clement of Alexandria and Porphyry.

called

Egyptian writing II. The sacred, 1. Hieratic, or the writing of the priests.

into two divisions

a. Cyriologic, by means of the first
letters of the alphabet.

divided by

Clement into 2. Hieroglyphic

composed of

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summary.

on hieroglyphics.

The next writer of importance on hieroglyphics is Horapollo Horapollo, who towards the close of the IVth century of our era composed a work called 'Iepoyλvpiкá; 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, ed. Didot, § 11, p. 89, at the foot.

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