DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.6359#0072
64 EGYPT AND ITS MONUMENTS.
quality similar to that which the verb was meant to denote.
Thus " to be angry," has for a determinative an ape, because he
is a very irascible animal: " to blush " or " to be red," is deter-
mined by a flamingo, a scarlet bird. The principle was car-
ried further still; it was applied sometimes to the pronouns.
" The pronoun of the first person, whether used either as the
subject or object of the verb, or in the possessive form with the
substantive, is frequently determined " (says Osborn), " by a
picture of the person speaking, which on obelisks and other
monuments elaborately finished, is a portrait." This may have
led to the erroneous opinion of some that all the faces of great
personages on the monuments are portraits. But as our object
is simply to furnish the reader with some general idea of the
singular graphics of the ancient dwellers in Egypt, and not to
elucidate the grammatical structure of their language, we will
not longer dwell on the subject of determinatives.
It remains to speak of one other species of symbol used in
hieroglyphical writing, Avhich was discovered by the acute
mind of Champollion. It arises from a peculiarity in the an-
cient Egyptian language, said to resemble one in the Chinese,
viz., the employment of the same sound to express many dif-
ferent ideas. Thus, a hatchet, *j named Ter, is one of the
commonest symbols of " God or Divine Being," because that
idea was denoted by the same sound, Ter. The weaver's shut-
tle >=aj xrx is the symbol of the goddess Neith, because
in the ancient language, neth was the word that meant shuttle.
The idea of a physician is often represented by a duck; the
name of the duck was cein, the Egyptian word for physician
was ceini. As to the mode of writing the hieroglyphics, it was
sometimes vertical and sometimes horizontal; it might be from
quality similar to that which the verb was meant to denote.
Thus " to be angry," has for a determinative an ape, because he
is a very irascible animal: " to blush " or " to be red," is deter-
mined by a flamingo, a scarlet bird. The principle was car-
ried further still; it was applied sometimes to the pronouns.
" The pronoun of the first person, whether used either as the
subject or object of the verb, or in the possessive form with the
substantive, is frequently determined " (says Osborn), " by a
picture of the person speaking, which on obelisks and other
monuments elaborately finished, is a portrait." This may have
led to the erroneous opinion of some that all the faces of great
personages on the monuments are portraits. But as our object
is simply to furnish the reader with some general idea of the
singular graphics of the ancient dwellers in Egypt, and not to
elucidate the grammatical structure of their language, we will
not longer dwell on the subject of determinatives.
It remains to speak of one other species of symbol used in
hieroglyphical writing, Avhich was discovered by the acute
mind of Champollion. It arises from a peculiarity in the an-
cient Egyptian language, said to resemble one in the Chinese,
viz., the employment of the same sound to express many dif-
ferent ideas. Thus, a hatchet, *j named Ter, is one of the
commonest symbols of " God or Divine Being," because that
idea was denoted by the same sound, Ter. The weaver's shut-
tle >=aj xrx is the symbol of the goddess Neith, because
in the ancient language, neth was the word that meant shuttle.
The idea of a physician is often represented by a duck; the
name of the duck was cein, the Egyptian word for physician
was ceini. As to the mode of writing the hieroglyphics, it was
sometimes vertical and sometimes horizontal; it might be from