Part 69

3. Enigmatic are those in which an emblematic figure is put in lieu of the one intended to be represented, as a hawk for the sun; a seated figure with a curved beard, for a god. These three kinds were either used _alone_, or _in company_ with the phonetically written word they represented. Thus: 1. The word Ra, sun, might be written in letters only, or be also followed by the ikonograph, the _solar disk_ (which if alone would still have the same meaning--Ra, the sun). So, too, the word "moon," Aah, was followed by the crescent. In these cases the sign so following the phonetic word has been called a _terminative_, from its serving to determine the meaning of what preceded it. We give here a few words translated:

[Illustration]

"In your transformation as golden sperbe you have accomplished it."

2. In the same manner, the _tropical_ hieroglyphics might be alone or in company with the word written phonetically; and the expression "to write," _skhai_, might be followed or not by its tropical hieroglyphic, the "pen and inkstand," as its determinative sign. 3. The emblematic figure, a _hawk-headed_ god, bearing the disk, signifying the "sun," might also be alone, or after the name "Ra" written phonetically, as a determinative sign; and as a general rule the determinative followed, instead of preceding the names. Determinatives are of two kinds--ideograms, and generic determinatives: the first were the pictures of the object spoken of; the second, conventional symbols of the class of notions expressed by the word.

[Illustration]

4. Phonetic. Phonetic characters or signs were those expressive of sounds. They are either purely _alphabetic_ or _syllabic_. All the other Egyptian phonetic signs have _syllabic_ values, which are resolvable into combinations of the letters of the alphabet. This phonetic principle being admitted, the numbers of figures used to represent a sound might have been increased almost without limit, and any hieroglyphic might stand for the first letter of its name. So copious an alphabet would have been a continual source of error. The characters, therefore, thus applied, were soon fixed, and the Egyptians practically confined themselves to particular hieroglyphics in writing certain words.

[Illustration]

"Out of bad comes good."

Hieroglyphic writing was employed on monuments of all kinds, on temples as well as on the smallest figures, and on bricks used for building purposes. On the most ancient monuments this writing is absolutely the same as on the most recent Egyptian work. Out of Egypt there is scarcely a single example of a graphic system identically the same during a period of over two thousand years. The hieroglyphic characters were either engraved in relief, or sunk below the surface on the public monuments, and objects of hard materials suited for the glyptic art. The hieroglyphics on the monuments are either sculptured and plain, or decorated with colors. The colored are divided into two distinct classes, the monochromatic of one simple tone, and the polychromatic, or those which rendered with more or less fidelity the color of the object they were intended to depict. The hieroglyphic figures were arranged in vertical columns or horizontal lines, and grouped together as circumstances required, so as to leave no spaces unnecessarily vacant. They were written from right to left, or from left to right. The order in which the characters were to be read, was shown by the direction in which the figures are placed, as their heads are invariably turned towards the reader. A single line of hieroglyphics--the dedication of a temple or of any other monument, for example--proceeds sometimes one half from left to right, and the other half from right to left; but in this case a sign, such as the sacred tau, or an obelisk, which has no particular direction, is placed in the middle of the inscription, and it is from that sign that the two halves of the inscription take each an opposite direction.

The period when hieroglyphics--the oldest Egyptian characters--were first used, is uncertain. They are found in the Great Pyramid of the time of the fourth dynasty, and had evidently been invented long before, having already assumed a cursive style.[23] This shows them to be far older than any other known writing; and the written documents of the ancient languages of Asia, the Sanskrit and the Zend, are of a recent time compared with those of Egypt, even if the date of the Rig-Veda in the fifteenth century B.C. be proved. Manetho shows that the invention of writing was known in the reign of Athoth (the son and successor of Menes), the second King of Egypt, when he ascribes to him the writing of the anatomical books, and tradition assigned to it a still earlier origin. At all events, hieroglyphics, and the use of the papyrus, with the usual reed pen, are shown to have been common when the pyramids were built, and their style in the sculptures proves that they were then a very old invention. In hieroglyphics of the earliest periods there were fewer phonetic characters than in after ages, these periods being nearer to the original picture-writing. The number of signs also varied at different times; but they may be reckoned at from 900 to 1,000. Various new characters were added at subsequent periods, and a still greater number were introduced under the Ptolemies and Cæsars, which are not found in the early monuments; some, again, of the older times, fell into disuse.

Hieratic is an abbreviated form of the hieroglyphic; thus each hieroglyphic sign--ikonographic, symbolic, or phonetic--has its abridged hieratic form, and this abridged form has the same import as the sign itself of which it is a reduced copy. It was written from right to left, and was the character used by the priests and sacred scribes, whence its name. It was invented at least as early as the ninth dynasty (4,240 years ago), and fell into disuse when the demotic had been introduced. The hieratic writing was generally used for manuscripts, and is also found on the cases of mummies, and on isolated stones and tablets. Long inscriptions have been written on them with a brush. Inscriptions of this kind are also found on buildings, written or engraved by ancient travelers. But its most important use was in the historical papyri, and the registers of the temples. Most valuable information respecting the chronology and numeric systems of the Egyptians has been derived from them.

Demotic, or enchorial, is composed of signs derived from the hieratic, and is a simplified form of it, but from which figurative or ikonographic signs are generally excluded, and but few symbolical signs, relative to religion alone, are retained; signs nearly approaching the alphabetic are chiefly met with in this third kind of writing. It was invariably written, like the hieratic, from right to left. It is thus evident that the Egyptians, strictly speaking, had but one system of writing, composed of three kinds of signs, the second and third being regularly deduced from the first, and all three governed by the same fundamental principles. The demotic was reserved for general use among the Egyptians: decrees and other public acts, contracts, some funeral stelæ, and private transactions, were written in demotic. The intermediate text of the Rosetta inscription is of this kind. It is not quite certain when the demotic first came into use, but it was at least as early as the reign of Psammetichus II., of the twenty-sixth dynasty (B.C. 604); and it had therefore long been employed when Herodotus visited Egypt. Soon after its invention it was adopted for all ordinary purposes.

The chief objects of interest in the study of an Egyptian inscription are its historical indications. These are found in the names of Kings or of chief officers, and in the dates they contain. The names of Kings are always enclosed in an oval called _cartouche_. An oval contains either the royal title or prænomen, or the proper name or nomen of the King.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN PILLAR.]

The dates which are found with these royal legends are also of great importance in an historical point of view, and monuments which bear any numerical indications are exceedingly rare. These numerical indications are either the age of the deceased on a funeral tablet, or the number of different consecrated objects which he has offered to the gods, or the date of an event mentioned in the inscription. Dates, properly so called, are the most interesting to collect; they are expressed in hieroglyphic cyphers, single lines expressing the number of units up to nine, when an arbitrary sign represents 10, another 100, and another 10,000.

The most celebrated Egyptian inscriptions are those of the Rosetta stone. This stone, a tablet of black basalt, contains three inscriptions, one in hieroglyphics, another in demotic or enchorial, and a third in the Greek language. The inscriptions are to the same purport in each, and are a decree of the priesthood of Memphis, in honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes, about the year B.C. 196. "Ptolemy is there styled King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Son of the gods Philopatores, approved by Pthah, to whom Ra has given victory, a living image of Amun, son of Ra, Ptolemy Immortal, beloved by Pthah, God Epiphanes, most gracious. In the date of the decree we are told the names of the priests of Alexander, of the gods Soteres, of the gods Adelphi, of the gods Euergetæ, of the gods Philopatores, of the god Epiphanes himself, of Berenice Euergetis, of Arsinoe Philadelphus, and of Arsinoe Philopator. The preamble mentions with gratitude the services of the King, or rather of his wise minister, Aristomenes, and the enactment orders that the statue of the King shall be worshipped in every temple of Egypt, and be carried out in the processions with those of the gods of the country, and lastly that the decree is to be carved at the foot of every statue of the King in sacred, in common and in Greek writing" (Sharpe). It is now in the British Museum. This stone is remarkable for having led to the discovery of the system pursued by the Egyptians in their monumental writing, and for having furnished a key to its interpretation, Dr. Young giving the first hints by establishing the phonetic value of the hieroglyphic signs, which were followed up and carried out by Champollion.

Another important and much more ancient inscription is the tablet of Abydos in the British Museum. It was discovered by Mr. Banks in a chamber of the temple of Abydos, in 1818. It is now greatly disfigured, but when perfect it represented an offering made by Remeses II., of the nineteenth dynasty, to his predecessors on the throne of Egypt. The tablet is of fine limestone, and originally contained the names of fifty-two Kings disposed in the two upper lines, twenty-six in each line, and a third or lower line with the name and prænomen of Remeses II. or III. repeated twenty-six times. On the upper line, beginning from the right hand, are the names of monarchs anterior to the twelfth dynasty. The names in the second line are those of monarchs of the twelfth and the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasties. The King Remeses II. probably stood on the right hand of the tablet, and on the other is the lower part of a figure of Osiris. The lateral inscription is the speech of the deceased King to "their son" Remeses II.

The tablet of Karnac, now in one of the halls of the Bibliotheque at Paris, was discovered by Burton in a chamber situated in the southeast angle of the temple-palace of Thebes, and was published by its discoverer in his "Excerpta Hieroglyphica." The chamber itself was fully described by Rosellini in his "Monumenti Storici." The Kings are in two rows, overlooked each of them by a large figure of Thothmes III., the fifth King of the eighteenth dynasty. In the row to the left of the entrance are thirty-one names, and in that to the right are thirty, all of them predecessors of Thothmes. The Theban Kings who ruled in Upper Egypt during the usurpation of the Hyksos invaders are also exhibited among the lists. Over the head of each King is his oval, containing his royal titles.

A most valuable tablet of Kings has been lately discovered by M. Mariette in a tomb near Memphis, that of a priest who lived under Remeses II., and was called Tunar-i. It contains two rows of Kings' names, each twenty-nine in number. Six have been wholly obliterated out of the upper row, and five out of the lower row. The upper row contains the names of Remeses II. and his predecessors, who seem all meant for Kings of Upper Egypt, or Kings of Memphis who ruled over Upper Egypt, while the names in the lower row seem meant for contemporaneous High Priests of Memphis, some or all of whom may have called themselves Kings of Lower Egypt. The result of the comparison of this tablet with other authorities, namely, Manetho, Eratosthenes, and the tablet of Abydos, is supposed by some to contradict the longer views of chronology held by Bunsen, Lepsius and others. Thus, reading the list of names backwards from Remeses II. to Amosis, the first of the eighteenth dynasty, this tablet, like the tablet of Abydos, immediately jumps to the Kings of Manetho's twelfth dynasty; thus arguing that the intermediate five dynasties mentioned by Manetho must have been reigning contemporaneously with the others, and add no length of time to a table of chronology. There is also a further omission in this tablet of four more dynasties. This tablet would thus seem to confirm the views of the opponents of the longer chronology of Bunsen and others, by striking out from the long chronology two periods amounting together to 1,536 years. But a complete counterpart of the tablet of Memphis has been recently found at Abydos by M. Mariette, fully confirming the chronology of Manetho, and bearing out the views of Bunsen and Lepsius. The _Moniteur_ publishes a letter from M. Mariette, containing the following statement:--"At Abydos I have discovered a magnificent counterpart of the tablet of Sakharah. Seti I., accompanied by his son, subsequently Remeses II. (Sesostris), presents an offering to seventy-six Kings drawn up in line before him. Menes (the first King of the first dynasty on Manetho's list) is at their head. From Menes to Seti I., this formidable list passes through nearly all the dynasties. The first six are represented therein. We are next introduced to sovereigns still unknown to us, belonging to the obscure period which extends from the end of the sixth to the beginning of the eleventh. From the eleventh to the eighteenth the new table follows the beaten track, which it does not quit again during the reign of Thothmes, Amenophis, and the first Remeses. If in this new list everything is not absolutely new, we at least find in it a valuable confirmation of Manetho's list, and in the present state of science we can hardly expect more. Whatever confirms Manetho gives us confidence in our own efforts, even as whatever contradicts it weakens the results we obtain. The new tablet of Abydos is, moreover, the completest and best preserved monument we possess in this respect. Its style is splendid, and there is not a single cartouche or oval wanting. It has been found engraved on one of the walls of a small chamber in the large temple of Abydos."

An important stone bearing a Greek inscription with equivalent Egyptian hieroglyphics has been discovered by Professor Lepsius, at San, the former Tanis, the chief scene of the grand architectural undertakings of Remeses II. The Greek inscription consists of seventy-six lines, in the most perfect preservation, dating from the time of Ptolemy Euergetes I. (B.C. 238). The hieroglyphical inscription has thirty-seven lines. It was also found that a demotic inscription was ordered to be added by the priests, on a stone or brass stele, in the sacred writing of the Egyptians and in Greek characters; this is unfortunately wanting. The contents of the inscription are of great interest. It is dated the ninth year the seventh Apellæus--seventeen Tybi, of the reign of Euergetes I. The priests of Egypt came together in Canopus to celebrate the birthday of Euergetes, on the fifth Dios, and his assumption of the royal honor on the twenty-eighth of the same month, when they passed the decree here published. They enumerate all the good deeds of the King, amongst them the merit of having recovered in a military expedition the sacred images carried off in former times by the Persians, and order great honors to be paid in reward for his services. This tablet of calcareous stone with a rounded top, is about seven feet high, and is completely covered by the inscription. The discovery of this stone is of the greatest importance for hieroglyphical studies.

We may mention here another inscribed tablet, the celebrated Isiac table in the Museum at Turin. It is a tablet in bronze, covered with Egyptian figures or hieroglyphics engraved or sunk, the outlines being filled with silvering, forming a kind of niello. It was one of the first objects that excited an interest in the interpretation of hieroglyphics, and elicited learned solutions from Kircher and others. It is now considered to be one of those pseudo-Egyptian productions so extensively fabricated during the reign of Hadrian.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN COLUMN.]

The Egyptian obelisks also present important inscriptions. Of these the most ancient is that of Heliopolis.

We have selected these few examples of Egyptian inscriptions for their celebrity. Almost every Egyptian monument, of whatever period, temples, statues, tablets, small statues, were inscribed with hieroglyphic inscriptions, all generally executed with great care and finish. The Egyptian edifices were also covered with religious or historical tableaux, sculptured and painted on all the walls; it has been estimated that in one single temple there existed no less than 30,000 square feet of sculpture, and at the sides of these tableaux were innumerable inscriptions, equally composed of ingeniously grouped figurative signs, in explanation of the subjects, and combining with them far more happily than if they had been the finest alphabetical characters in the world.

Their study would require more than a lifetime, and we have only space to give a few general hints.

We have a much more accurate knowledge of Greek inscriptions than we have of Egyptian palæography. The Greek alphabet, and all its variations, as well as the language, customs, and history of that illustrious people, are better known to us. Greek inscriptions lead us back to those glorious periods of the Greek people when their heroes and writers made themselves immortal by their illustrious deeds and writings. What emotions must arise in the breast of the archæologist who finds in a marble worn by time the funereal monument placed by Athens, twenty-three centuries ago, over the grave of its warriors who died before Potidæa.

"Their souls high heaven received; their bodies gained, In Potidæa's plains, this hallowed tomb. Their foes unnumbered fell: a few remained Saved by their ramparts from the general doom. The victor city mourns her heroes slain, Foremost in fight, they for her glory died."

The most important monumental inscription which presents Greek records, illustrating and establishing the chronology of Greek history, is the Parian chronicle, now preserved among the Arundelian marbles at Oxford. It was so called from the supposition of its having been made in the Island of Paros, B.C. 263. In its perfect state it was a square tablet, of coarse marble, five inches thick; and when Selden first inspected it it measured three feet seven inches by two feet seven inches. On this stone were engraved some of the principal events in the history of ancient Greece, forming a compendium of chronology during a series of 1,318 years, which commenced with the reign of Cecrops, the first King of Athens, B.C. 1582, and ended with the archonship of Diognetus. It was deciphered and published by the learned Selden in 1628. It makes no mention of Olympiads, and reckons backwards from the time then present by years.

## Particular attention should be paid, in the interpretation of Greek

inscriptions, to distinguish the numerous titles of magistrates of every order, of public officers of different ranks, the names of gods and of nations, those of towns, and the tribes of a city; the prescribed formulas for different kinds of monuments; the text of decrees, letters, etc., which are given or cited in analogous texts; the names of monuments, such as stelæ, tablets, cippi, etc., the indication of places, or parts belonging to those places, where they ought to be set up or deposited, such as a temple or vestibule, a court or peristyle, public square, etc.; those at whose cost it was set up, the entire city or a curia, the public treasure, or a private fund, the names and surnames of public or private individuals; prerogatives or favors granted, such as the right of asylum, of hospitality, of citizenship; the punishments pronounced against those who should destroy or mutilate the monument; the conditions of treaties and alliances; the indications of weights, moneys and measures.

Another early example of a commemorative inscription of which the date can also be positively fixed is that lately discovered by Dr. Frick on the bronze serpent with the three heads, now at Constantinople, which supported the golden tripod which was dedicated, as Herodotus states, to Apollo by the allied Greeks as a tenth of the Persian spoils at Platæa, and which was placed near the altar at Delphi. On this monument, as we learn from Thucydides, Pausanias, regent of Sparta, inscribed an arrogant distich, in which he commemorates the victory in his own name as general in chief, hardly mentioning the allied forces who gained it. This epigram was subsequently erased by the Lacedæmonians, who substituted it for an inscription enumerating the various Hellenic states who had taken a part in repulsing the Persian invaders. The inscription contains exactly what the statements of Thucydides and Herodotus would lead us to expect; the names of those Greek states which took an active part in the defeat of the Persians. Thirty-one names have been deciphered, and there seem to be traces of three more. The first three names in the list are the Lacedæmonians, Athenians, Corinthians. The remainder are nearly identical with those inscribed on the statue of Zeus at Olympia, as they are given by Pausanias. The names of the several states seem to be arranged on the serpent generally according to their relative importance, and also with some regard to their geographical distribution. The states of continental Greece are enumerated first; then the islanders and outlying colonies in the north and west. It is supposed the present inscription was placed on the serpent B.C. 476.

The dedicatory inscriptions on the statues at Branchidæ probably range from B.C. 580-520. The famous Sigean inscription, brought from the Troad to England in the last century, is now admitted to be not a pseudo-archaic imitation, as Bockh maintained, but a genuine specimen of Greek writing in Asia Minor, contemporary, or nearly so, with the Branchidæ inscriptions. Kirchhoff considers it not later than Olympiad 69 (B.C. 504-500).

A most interesting inscription of the archaic period is the celebrated bronze tablet, which Sir William Gell obtained from Olympia, and on which is engraved a treaty between the Eleans and Heræans. The terms of this specimen of ancient diplomacy are singularly concise. Kirchhoff places this inscription before Olympiad 75 (B.C. 480); Bockh assigns it to a much earlier date. In any case, we may regard this as the oldest extant treaty in the Greek language. It must have been originally fixed on the wall of some temple at Olympia.