ANIMALS.
78. A figure sitting on the ground, and stretching out one hand, seems to imply simply a MAN or per son; which is certainly the sense of the enchorial • character that commonly answers to it in the manu scripts; but in composition the figure often appears to lose this sense.
74. The horned snake, creeping along, is clearly meant, in some parts of the inscription of Rosetta, for ma or rr ; although it has other senses in com position. It is very remarkable, that the enchorial character, and that of the manuscripts, resembling a y, approaches extremely near to the Coptic r, which also means him ;" and HOF, OE HFO, 18 the Coptic term for a snake ; so that this coincidence seems to afford us another trace of the origin of the alphabet.
75 .. 78. The BULLOCK, the RAM, the ANTELOPE, and the TORTOISE, are proved to be sometimes repre sentations of the things which they resemble, by their occurrence in inscriptions accompanied by tablets ; though some of them have -probably, elsewhere, a metaphorical sense. The ram is often represented
with two pairs of horns ; the one natural, the other imaginary.
78*. The CROCODILE is identified by a very dis tinct drawing in a manuscript sent home by Mr Bankes, and is repeatedly designated in the text by a figure representing it. (a) The deity with a cro codile's head is a separte personage, and is denoted by a figure of the same animal with the tail turned under it. (b) Plate LXXVII I. (L) 79. The as or BASILISC is so coarsely represented in the stone of Rosetta, that the object intended by it could not have been conjectured without a com wison with other inscriptions ; the context was, however, sufficient to determine its meaning from the examination of this monument alone.