The syllabics are constructed on the same plan. They consist of an initial hieroglyph, which is capable of expressing by itself the whole syllable, but which take after them their inher ent consonant or complement, and are sometimes preceded by their initial complement. These are more numer ous than the alphabetieo-syllabie class, and are as commonly used iii the texts. The language had impressed upon it by this mode of writing a certain ideo graphic character, which it retained, certain words being only written by certain syllabics, and the use of the two syllabaries was by no means pro miscuous, the examples of different modes of grouping the same word being abnormal, And referable only to long intervals of lime. For although several hundred papyri exist in the museums of Europe, and no two are written precisely alike, yet the greatest differences will be observable in those which are similar texts, written at long intervals of time from each other. Nevertheless some latitude prevails in the writing of certain words and pro pernames, and those hieroglyphs which appear in the corresponding places of others are called variants or homophones. Some times the same proper name is represented by six different groups of hieroglyphs, yet they could only have been pronounced in one way, as they represent the same name, and the different hieroglyphs are consequently only interchanged to express the same sonnds.
The language of the hieroglyphs is nearest to the Coptic, the form which it assumed about the 3d c. A.D., when the Greek alphabet, reinforced by letters borrowed from the demotic or popular cursive hand of the period, superseded the demotic and hieroglyphic mode of writing. This language, extinct only as spoken about a century and a half ago (see Come), differs considerably from the monumental texts, having been eor rnpted by the introduction of Greek, Latin, and Arabic words, but this contains, as its base, the old language of the country—a tongue analogous in some respects to the Semitic dialects, but in others of a construction which may be called Hamitic, or allied to the African. The great peculiarity of the hieroglyphic language is that the verbal root both of the nouns, adjectives, and verbs remains unchanged, and that the dual and plural are made by postfixes, the cases of the nouns formed by prepositions, and the tenses of the verbs by the prefixing of the declined abstract verbs, au, an, or kheper, to be; or by the affixing of the pronouns a, k, t, f, 8, Ben, ten, sea, preceded by prepositions, to the verbal roots. The pronouns are either detached and prefixed or affixed, and the prepositions are either simple or compound; many remarkable forms of the last class existing in the language. There is a great vagueness in their employment. and their meaning is often abnormal, and only defined by the context.
Considered as the most ancient written language, the hieroglyphs throw great light upon comparative philology, the relative antiquity of various words and locutions, the general construction of language itself, and the development of picture-writing into the abstract ciphers of sound, called letters. portion of the words are similar to the Semitic, either directly or indirectly: thus mina, the sea, is like the Hebrew yam; kof, an ape, like go!. The majority are, of course, purely Coptic; but at the period of the 19th dynasty, or about 1300 B.C., many Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic woids were intro duced into the language by the progress of the Egyptian arms to the east, and such words as bola for beth, a house, malafturit for migdol, a tower, and others, appear; they are, however, rare and few in number compared to the body of the language. 31any other words appear to be Indo-Germanic. The literature will be found under the word PAPYRUS.
The invention of hieroglyphs, called ?tete?• Horn, or "divine words," was attributed to the god Thoth, the Egyptian Logos, who is repeatedly called the scribe of the gods, and lord of the hieroglyphs. Pliny attributes their invention to Menon. The literature of the Egyptians was in fact styled hermaic or hermetic, on account of its supposed divine origin, and the knOwledge of hieroglyphs was, to a certain extent., a mystery to the ignorant, although universally employed by the sacerdotal and instructed classes. To foreign nations the hieroglyphs always remained so. although Moses is supposed to have been versed in the knowledge of them (Philo, vita Moysis); but Joseph is describedas conversing with his brethren throughinterpreters, and does not appear to allude to hieroglyphic writing. The Greeks, who had settled on the coast as early as the Gth c. B.C., do not appear to have possessed more than a colloquial knowledge of the language; and although Solon, 538 is said to have studied Egyptian doctrines at Beliennytus and Heliopolis, and the doctrines of Pythagoras are thought to have been derived from Egypt, these sages could only have acquired their knowledge from interpretations of hieroglyphic writings. Hecatams (521 n.c.) and Ilerodonts (456 n.c.), who visited Egypt in their travels, obtained front similar sources the information they have afforded of the language or monuments of the country.
Democrituc of Abdera indeed, about the same period (459 Re.), had described both the Ethiopian hieroglyphs and the Babylonian cuneiform, but his work has disappeared. After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander, the Greek rulers began to pay attention to the language and history of their subjects, and Eratosthenes, the keeper of the museum at Alexandria, and Manetho, the high-priest of Selmennytus, had drawn up accounts of the national chronology and history from hieroglyphic sources. Under the Borneo empire, in the reign of Augustus, one Chteremon, the keeper of the library at the Serapmum, had drawn up a dictionary of the hieroglyphs; and both Motion's and Strabo mention them and describe their nature. Tacitus, later under the empire, gives the account of the monuments of Thebes translated by the Egyptian priests to Ocr manicus; but after his time the knowledge of them beyond Egypt itself was exceed ingly limited, and does not reappear till the 3d and subsequent centuries A.D.. when they are mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, who cites the translation of one of the obelisks at Rome by one Hermapion, and by Julius Valerins, the author of the apocry phal life of Alexander, who gives that of another. Heliodorus, a novelist who flour ished 400 A.D., describes a hieroglyphic letter written by queen Candace (iv. 8). The first positive information on the subject is by Clement of Alexandria (211 A.D.), who mentions the symbolical and phonetic, or, as he calls it, cyriologic nature of hiero glyphics. Porphyry (304 A.D.) divides them also into ecenologic or phonetic, and enigmatic or symbolic. Horapollo or Horus-Apollon, who is supposed to have flour ished about 500 A.D., wrote two books explanatory of the hieroglyphs, a rude, ill assorted confusion of truth and fiction, in which are given the interpretation of many hieroglyphs and their esoteric meaning. After this writer. all knowledge of them dis appeared till the revival of letters. At the beginning of the 1Gth c., 1529 A.D., these symbols first attracted attention, and soon after Kircher, a learned .Jesuit, pretended to interpret them by vague esoteric notions derived from his own fancy, on the supposition that the hieroglyphs were ideographic, a theory whip"' barred all progress. and was held in its full extent by the learned, till Zcien., at the dose of the 18th' c., 1787 A.D., first enunciated that the ovals or cartouches contained royal names, and that the hiero;r1vphs. or some of them, were used to express. sounds. More monuments were known, and juster ideas had begun to dawn on the European mind; and the discovery by the French, in 1799, of the so-called Rosetta stone, a slab of black granite having inscribed upon it, first in hieroglyphics, secondly in demotic or enchorial (a cursive popular form of writing extant at the period), and thirdly in Greek, a decree of the priests of Egypt assembled in synod at Memphis in honor of Ptolemy V., gave the first clue to the decipherment. The first attempts, indeed, were made upon the demotic text by Silvestre de Sacy with some success, but it was soon discovered that the demotic Wt13 not purely alphabetic. Crude notions of the ideographic nature of the hieroglyphs pre vailed till Dr. Young, in 1818, first gave out the hypothesis that the hieroglyphs were used as sounds in royal proper names. He was led to this conclusion by tracing the hieroglyphs through the cursive hieratic to the more cursive demotic; and as this last was known to he alphabetic, lie deduced that the corresponding hieroglyphic signs were so. In this manner, he came to the conclusion that the first hieroglyph in the name of Ptolemy in the Rosetta stone (a mat) represented a P; the second (hemisphere) a T; the third (a loop) he supposed to be superfluous; the fourth (a lion) lie read OLE; the fifth and sixth, the syllable MI; and seventh, the back of the seat, an S. Unaided by bilingual monuments, he essayed to decipher the name of Berenice, and altogether established the value of five hieroglyphs as letters out of two names, but was unable to proceed further. Champollion, in 1822, by means of an inscription found on an obelisk at Pltilte, which had at the base a Greek inscription, recognized the name of Cleopatra. and by comparison with that of Ptolemy at once proved the purely alphabetic, not syllabico-alphabetic, nature of the signs. Extending the principle, lie read by its means the names of the Greek and Roman and finally those of the native monarchs. It was soon seen that the same hieroglyphs as those used in these names were extensively used in the texts for words, and these words turned out, in most instances, to be analogous to the Coptic. Although the discoveries of Champollion were received by many of the learned in Europe with distrust, yet hie method of research was slowly adopted by Rosellim and Salvolini in 1832, and subsequently extended methodically by Lepsius in 1837, and by Bunsen, Hincks, De Rouge, Birch, Goodwin, Chabas, Brugsch, and others.