DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4372#0423
APPENDIX.
Note A, page 101,
Unfortunately, of the fifteen rolls of papyrus of different sizes which we
were afterwards able to procure in the Thebaid, only four have reached
England. Of the remainder, some were lost in the brig Mentor, when she
sank near the coast of Cerigo, and the others have been missing since the
untimely death of the officer to whom they belonged.
Of the four which I brought to England, one is in the British Museum,
another in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries: the other two
are but fragments: one of them written in the common Egyptic character,
that of the other approaching much more to the hieroglyphical mode of
writing.
This circumstance had first induced me to consider, in a memoir submitted
to the Society of Antiquaries, the vulgar character, or lyyjJo-jiu y^x^^urcc of
antient Egypt, as having derived its origin from the picture-writing of ear-
lier ages: and I am further inclined to that opinion by the observation of
many peculiarities in which they still resemble, these resemblances becoming
more and more distant, in proportion to the remoteness of the period of such
writings from the original institution of their hieroglyphical archetype. In
some rolls of papyrus almost every letter bears a faint resemblance to some
visible object, as an eye, bird, serpent, knife, &c, whereas in others it is
very difficult to trace it; and at the date of the inscription on the Rosetta
stone
Note A, page 101,
Unfortunately, of the fifteen rolls of papyrus of different sizes which we
were afterwards able to procure in the Thebaid, only four have reached
England. Of the remainder, some were lost in the brig Mentor, when she
sank near the coast of Cerigo, and the others have been missing since the
untimely death of the officer to whom they belonged.
Of the four which I brought to England, one is in the British Museum,
another in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries: the other two
are but fragments: one of them written in the common Egyptic character,
that of the other approaching much more to the hieroglyphical mode of
writing.
This circumstance had first induced me to consider, in a memoir submitted
to the Society of Antiquaries, the vulgar character, or lyyjJo-jiu y^x^^urcc of
antient Egypt, as having derived its origin from the picture-writing of ear-
lier ages: and I am further inclined to that opinion by the observation of
many peculiarities in which they still resemble, these resemblances becoming
more and more distant, in proportion to the remoteness of the period of such
writings from the original institution of their hieroglyphical archetype. In
some rolls of papyrus almost every letter bears a faint resemblance to some
visible object, as an eye, bird, serpent, knife, &c, whereas in others it is
very difficult to trace it; and at the date of the inscription on the Rosetta
stone