Appendix II
Decipherment of the Hieroglyphs
The idea long prevailed that the hieroglyphic characters were ideographic—i.e. that they represented ideas, not sounds; and any attempt at decipherment was hopeless. Before the end of last century, however, a hint had been thrown out that the characters might prove to be phonetic—i.e. representing sounds like the letters of our ordinary alphabets. And a further suggestion had been offered that the words enclosed within ovals might be the names of royal personages. But unless some means existed of comparing those names with the same names written in a known language, not a single hieroglyph could be read. The discovery of the Rosetta stone in 1799 supplied the means required. On that stone was engraved an inscription in three characters—the hieroglyphic, the demotic or popular Egyptian, and the Greek. Scholars, however, turned their attention at first rather to the comparison of the demotic and the Greek, as the idea still prevailed that the hieroglyphs were not phonetic. It happened, also, that the beginning of the hieroglyphic and the end of the Greek inscription were wanting, which added greatly to the difficulty of comparing the texts. Thus ‘the seals of the mysterious book were still unclosed’ when Champollion began his labours. He succeeded in identifying the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, and by comparing them with each other and with their Greek counterparts he identified ten letters which were clearly phonetic. The first and second characters in the king’s name were found in their right places in that of the queen, and the initial letter of Cleopatra did not occur in the name of Ptolemy, etc. By the examination and comparison of other proper names other letters were determined, and a phonetic alphabet gradually acquired. But the formidable task remained of examining, reducing to order, and deciphering the vast mass of characters that were still unread.
The fact is that in the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, hundreds of characters are employed as well as the letters of the alphabet; these characters represent syllables, words, or ideas, and could be used instead of the letters, almost at the pleasure of the writer. This gradually became apparent to Champollion, and as, fortunately, there are a very great number of copies extant of the same MSS., he was able, by laborious and persevering collation of those MSS., to determine the phonetic value of a great number of characters. To use a familiar illustration, it is as though two copies of an English sentence were compared by a foreigner who was acquainted only with the alphabet; in one of them occurred the word three and the word and, whilst in the other copy, in the places occupied by those words, appeared the character 3 and the character &; or in an astronomical treatise, he would find the words sun and Taurus interchangeable with the signs ☉ and ♉. It would clearly be possible for him to read the four signs into the words for which they respectively stand, by a comparison of copies. The only difference is that the use of signs, whether for syllables, words, or ideas, is carried to such an immense extent in the old Egyptian writing, that their decipherment was a work of the most arduous kind. Champollion, nevertheless, succeeded in recovering and reading the old Egyptian language to a great extent, and his work has been ardently carried forward by his successors. The language, however, even when deciphered and read, must have remained unintelligible, if modern Coptic (the descendant of the ancient tongue) had not afforded the key to its translation.
Footnotes
1 The date that has been assigned to the Great Pyramid varies by at least a thousand years, and is generally placed from about 3000 to 4000 b.c. The present tendency is certainly rather in favour of the remoter dates, as agreeing best with the requirements of historic data, and harmonising with the results of recent discovery and research.
2 Isis is joined in her lamentations by her sister Nephthys, who was wife of Set, but never shared his evil repute.
3 i.e. The Earth. Seb, the Earth-god, was father of Osiris; Nut, the Heaven above, was his mother in Egyptian mythology.
4 In Greek Heliopolis, which bears the same meaning as Pa-Ra—‘City of the Sun.’
5 So much was this the case, that at a later period simpler forms of writing, known as the hieratic and demotic were adopted for general purposes; but the ancient hieroglyphic characters continued to be employed on monuments and in the temples.
6 This comparison of the ancient ‘wisdom’ to the phœnix is taken from Reginald Stuart Poole’s Cities of Egypt,—an interesting and suggestive book, to which I have been more than once indebted, and especially in the above description of On.
7 Generally known as the ‘Book’ or ‘Ritual of the Dead,’ but it was never known to the Egyptians by any name of the kind.
8 Loftie’s Ride in Egypt.
9 The length of the Nile, from the spot where the Blue and White Nile unite, down to the Mediterranean, is 1800 miles. The valley of the Nile bounded east by the Arabian, west by the Libyan hills, varies in breadth from fourteen to thirty-two miles, but the breadth of the arable land does not exceed nine or ten miles.—Erasmus Wilson’s Egypt of the Past.
10 That position was in remarkable contrast to the subjection and seclusion of the Asiatic harem, and was superior to that assigned to women in the domestic and social life of Greece itself. The Egyptian was the husband of one wife, and she was regarded as the honoured mistress of the household; the companion, not the slave or inferior, of the man. In sculptures and paintings she is constantly seen sitting by his side; she joins him in receiving and welcoming guests, and freely takes her part in the occupations and enjoyments of social life. In the tombs and memorial chambers of the dead, husband and wife are still represented side by side.
11 The face of the Sphinx is 30 feet long and 14 wide. Its body 140, and its front paws 50 feet long. Between the paws was a small sanctuary.
12 Stanley’s Sinai and Palestine.
13 On the coffin-lid is a hieroglyphic inscription, which is interesting as showing at how early a period the departed spirit was regarded as one with Osiris. It runs thus: ‘O Osiris, King of Egypt, Menkaura, living for ever! born of Heaven, offspring of Seb. May thy Mother Nut (Heaven) stretch herself over thee, and cover thee in her Name of Heavenly Mystery. May she render thee divine, destroying all thine enemies, O King Menkaura, living for ever!’
14 Tribes inhabiting the desert beyond the north-east frontier of Egypt.
15 The Beautiful Rising.
16 It is not quite certain whether Punt was on the Arabian or Abyssinian shore of the Red Sea, probably the latter.
17 Tum, symbolised in the setting, Ra, in the risen sun, appear to signify respectively the hidden and the manifested deity—closely corresponding with Osiris—Horus; for there is a unity underlying the apparently endless varieties of Egyptian worships.
18 Words very suggestive as to the distractions and warfare of the preceding centuries, when the land had indeed seemed to have ‘forgotten the past.’
19 I am inclined to think that this ‘house’ and its secret passages meant his tomb, whither his son would resort to invoke his father’s memory, who, in the ‘boat of Ra,’ would not forget Usertesen.
20 Or ‘I hid among the shrubs.’ There is often considerable uncertainty in rendering the phrases of such ancient narratives as the ‘Story of Saneha.’
21 The unseen or hidden world.
22 Foreign tribes on north-east frontier. The point is lost for us.
23 At least he says of himself in his Instructions, ‘I never faltered since the day I was born.’
24 Egypt is the name given to the country by the Greeks, and is of very uncertain derivation.
25 Pharaoh is derived from the words Per-aa, ‘Great House,’ and answers pretty nearly to the ‘Sublime Porte’ at Constantinople. Later on it is used as the sovereign’s name.
26 This god, symbolised in the moon, was more especially the god of knowledge and science. He was the inventor of all arts, and the inspirer of the sacred writings, the lawgiver, and the advocate and justifier of the good before the tribunal of Osiris.
27 Probably Hak-shasu, or Princes of the Shasu. The Shasu were wandering tribes on the north-east, and it is not unlikely, Brugsch thinks, that this name was assigned them in derision of their claim to be considered Kings of Egypt. Kings of Egypt, indeed! No—haks (petty princes) of the Shasu they were. An accidental coincidence of meaning between Shasu and shepherd led to their being designated in later times ‘Shepherd Kings.’
28 Manetho, the Egyptian priest, who, in the days of the Ptolemies, wrote a history of his country in Greek. It is, unfortunately, lost, excepting his list of kings and dynasties, and a few fragments quoted by later writers.
29 Even during the civil wars some branch of the ancient line was ruling, and it is probable that the eleventh dynasty was united by marriage to the early kings.
30 These were the hands of the slain, which were cut off and counted to ascertain the number of the fallen.
31 See Nile Gleanings, by Villiers Stuart.
32 Nile Gleanings.
33 Brugsch, History of Egypt.
34 Honorific or crown name which Hatasu, like other Egyptian sovereigns, assumed at her accession, and which was distinct from the personal or family name.
35 The literature and traditions of these early Chaldean states were preserved and highly prized by the Assyrians, who appear to have had none of their own.
36 This barge was presented in the reign of Thothmes iv.
37 These two pictures are given in Nile Gleanings.
38 It is comparatively easy to understand the choice of certain animals as symbolic (see on p. 198), but it is impossible to comprehend how an ostrich feather came to be the emblem of Ma, goddess of truth, or a shuttle the sign of Neith, goddess of wisdom. A certain resemblance in name seems sometimes to have suggested the symbol.
39 Honorific or crown name of Thothmes iii.
40 This valley lay west of the pyramids in the Libyan desert, and was a favourite resort of sportsmen for hunting lions and other wild animals.
41 This district of ‘Babylon’ was that where Cairo now stands.
42 See the Nile Gleanings, where the portraits of the sovereigns are given. If Khu-en-aten’s is a caricature even, it is a caricature founded on a different type of countenance.
43 From a chapter in the Ritual.
44 The oval in which the royal names are always inscribed.
45 And the wives, in all probability, inherited only through their mother, Khu-en-aten’s wife.
46 See on p. 162.
47 Or Meri-en-Ptah, Seti’s crown name, meaning ‘Beloved of Ptah.’
48 The Good Being, i.e. Osiris.
49 The identification of the name is but doubtful.
50 The ‘Divine Mother,’—worshipped at Thebes with Amen-Ra.
51 Crown name, meaning ‘beloved of Amen.’
52 For the substance of this and of the foregoing paragraphs, I have been much indebted to Nile Gleanings and to its very interesting illustrations.
53 See Nile Gleanings.
54 In one hall, forming only a part of the temple in which it stands, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris, could stand without touching the walls!
55 For the foregoing particulars and some of the following, see Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians.
56 Ampère, Voyage en Egypte et Nubie.
57 Thebes was indeed always considered as two cities. Homer makes it plural, and it has ever since been so—Thebæ.
58 The Greek writer Diodorus Siculus says: ‘The Egyptians call their houses hostelries, since they can enjoy them for a brief space only; whereas their tombs are the eternal dwelling-places of the future.’
59 For some parts of the description of the cities of Thebes, see Karl Oppel’s Land der Pyramiden.
60 Ebers, in his Egyptian novel of the time of Rameses ii., Uarda.
61 Addressed to the departed seer.
62 I am not sure at how early a date the judgment scene is depicted in any existing funeral papyri; but I believe there is no doubt that neither that nor any ‘other world’ scene occurs in the tombs of the earlier dynasties, so far as they are yet known.
63 Notice the similarity of thought underlying this myth and that of Osiris and Set.
64 This idea of a sacred bark appears also in the form assigned to the sacred shrine, p. 177.
65 Max Müller, Science of Religion.
66 Take in illustration the symbols on any national flag. There is no intrinsic beauty in three coloured stripes, or in the grotesque figures of lions rampant. Yet for the sake of the nation of which they have become symbolic, men will die sooner than surrender the banners on which they are depicted. It is the same with the symbols of rival religions. How fierce the conflict waged by Saracen and Christian beneath the respective symbols of the Crescent and the Cross!
67 The biographer of Apollonius of Tyana records the following conversation. ‘The beasts and birds,’ says Apollonius, ‘may derive dignity from such representations, but the gods will lose theirs.’ ‘I think,’ says his opponent, ‘you slight our mode of worship before you have given it a fair examination. For surely what we are speaking of is wise, if anything Egyptian is so; the Egyptians do not venture to give any form to their deities, they only give them in symbols which have an occult meaning, that renders them venerable.’ Apollonius, however, is not convinced: he admits that the mind forms to itself an idea which it pictures better than any art can do, but he complains that the Egyptian custom takes from the gods the very power of appearing beautiful either to the eye or to the mind. Porphyry also regards the worship as symbolic; he says that ‘under the semblance of animals the Egyptians worship the universal power which the gods have revealed in the various forms of living nature.’ These quotations and those in the text are taken from Le Page Renout’s Hibbert Lectures.
68 We may, perhaps, except the Chinese.
69 Recent investigation has identified Tel-el-Maschuta, a spot not far from the modern Ismailia, as the site of both the Pithom and the Succoth of the Old Testament; the former was the sacred, the latter the civil name of the city, which is thus shown to have been one of the store-cities built by the Israelites (Ex. i. ii), and also the first stage reached by them on their journey (Ex. xii. 37; xiii. 20). The word Ar, meaning storehouse, occurs in the inscription by which M. Naville first identified Pithom-Succoth.
70 Generally supposed to have been a daughter of Rameses, but if Moses was eighty when he stood before the successor of that monarch, that would have been impossible.
71 Ex. ii. 23. How well this incidental allusion coincides with the sixty-seven years’ reign of Rameses ii.!
72 Such an investigation has been recently undertaken by the Egypt Exploration Fund. The extent to which it may be carried depends entirely on the means placed at its disposal.
73 Sometimes supposed to have been the turquoise, but it is doubtful whether correctly so.
74 The wording of the judgment seems to imply a judicial suicide.
75 Khons was the son of Amen and of Mut, the ‘divine mother,’ and formed with them the sacred triad of Thebes: but his worship never assumed a prominent place before this period. In many respects resembling Thoth, and, like him, connected with the moon, he was the especial god of the priesthood and giver of oracles.
76 Tiele, Hist. of Egyp. Relig.
77 The Hidden or Unseen.
78 Villiers Stuart, Nile Gleanings.
79 The Egyptian Pa-Bast, or the city of Bast. It was situated in the eastern portion of the Delta, and was of immemorial antiquity. Under the kings of the twenty-second dynasty, it attained great splendour, and the worship of Bast became wide-spread and popular. Herodotus saw her magnificent temple, and the festival celebrated in her honour with such splendour and revelry. Bast was almost identical with Sechet—the lioness and the cat were sacred to her. Her worship was exceedingly popular under the later dynasties, and this led to the wide-spread reverence with which the cat was regarded in those days.
80 Probably a princess of the dynasty ruling at Tanis; the priest-kings, whose seat of power was in the far south, are less likely to have connected themselves with the kingdom of Israel.
81 The Apis must be black, with certain white marks of mystical import.
82 One mode of consulting the sacred bull was by offering him food. Germanicus is said to have thus consulted him; the Apis refused to eat, and this unfavourable reception was considered to have foreboded his untimely fate.
83 The country known as Nubia then formed part of the land of Kush, i.e. Ethiopia.
84 A descendant, doubtless, of the twenty-second dynasty kings, of Assyrian origin.
85 This would be meant to apply only to all the rival claimants to sovereignty in the north, not to his own successors.
86 The priests were prohibited from eating fish, which was considered as unclean food—at any rate sea fish, of which the more devout and scrupulous Egyptians would not partake.
87 Compare Isa. xi. 11, xxvii. 13; Hosea ix. 6.
88 Isa. xxx. 4-7.
89 He was an Egyptian, and son of Tafnekht, who headed the league of northern chiefs against Piankhi (p. 246).
90 In this and in other quotations from the Old Testament the renderings of Ewald and Stanley have sometimes been adopted.
91 And thus a descendant of Tafnekht, the ambitious prince of Sais, defeated by Piankhi (p. 246).
92 The story told by Herodotus is that an oracle had declared that that prince who should make libation out of a brazen goblet should reign over all Egypt. One day all the princes appeared to offer sacrifice, but the high priest by mistake brought only eleven golden vessels, whereupon Psammetichus took off his helmet and used it for the libation. When it was observed that the oracle had thus, though inadvertently, been fulfilled, it was thought a prudent measure to depose and banish Psammetichus. He consulted the oracle, which announced that vengeance would come by brazen men, showing themselves from seaward. When he heard of pirates clad in brazen armour who had showed themselves in the Delta, he perceived the meaning of the oracle. By enlisting the Greek mercenaries in their panoplies of brass, he accordingly triumphed over his rivals, expelled the Assyrians, and became king of all Egypt.
93 Sais, in the Delta, was a magnificent city, and the temple of the goddess Neith, who was worshipped there, was celebrated for its splendour. The worship of Neith goes back to the earliest times, but under the dynasty which had its seat at Sais it attained very great prominence. Neith was a nature-goddess, and was called the ‘mother of the sun.’ She represents the hidden and mysterious ground of all things, and hence was naturally regarded as the goddess of wisdom. Like Athena, to whom the Greeks compared her, she was at the same time goddess of war. Over her temple was the inscription: ‘I am what is, what shall be, and what has been, and no man hath lifted my veil; I am the great mother of Ra.’
94 Nahum iii. 7, 19; ‘No spark of pity mingles with the prophet’s delight.’—Stanley, Jewish Church.
95 Jer. xlvi. 8, 9.
96 Jer. xlvi. 5, 16.
97 2 Kings xxiv. 7.
98 It was natural not to send Greeks against their fellow-countrymen, though the action was otherwise interpreted.
99 The story of Herodotus is that an Egyptian oculist had been sent to Persia to cure the king, who was suffering from some complaint of the eyes. Cambyses heard so much from him of the beauty of the daughter of Amasis, that he desired to have her for his wife. Amasis, unwilling to send his own daughter, substituted the daughter of his predecessor Apries. Cambyses, on discovering the fraud, was so enraged that he undertook the invasion of Egypt to punish the perfidy of its king. Cambyses certainly was not the man to wait for a pretext, whether the story be true or not. The narratives of Herodotus are by no means to be relied on; all that he relates as an eye-witness is of the utmost value.
100 Brugsch, History of Egypt.
101 It was Uah-hor-penres, priest of Neith, of whom Cambyses inquired, and who seems to have won great respect from the king. Sais appears, through his influence and good offices, to have been ‘saved in the great calamity that fell upon the land.’
102 Lord Derby’s translation.
103 ‘All intellectual Greeks,’ says Grote, ‘were naturally attracted to go and visit the wonders on the banks of the Nile.’
104 Grote.