Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

come the special representation of the temple belonging to that particular deity whose symbol we employ.

Indeed this mixture of characters is still more evident in the legends which contain the names of private individuals. They are, generally speaking, intermixed with other hieroglyphics, followed by the figure of a man or of a woman, as a sign of species, without being enclosed in a ring or cartouche, which you remember, I hope, was a mark of political distinction belonging to royalty only. The most curious circumstance is, that, besides the name of the individual, they regularly mention that of his father, and often even that of his mother, and these, without exception, preceded by the signs or characters denoting the relationship of which we have spoken. I shall give some instances. [Table 1. fig. 16.]

This inscription, which is found engraved on the basis of a statue in the cabinet of the King of France, is an exemplification of our doctrine. It is a mixture of different sorts of hieroglyphical characters, and exhibits not only the name of the man who ordered this statue, but also those of his parents.

In this legend we have twenty-six characters, of which twenty-one are phonetic, two are figurative, three are symbolico-phonetic, and the whole legend, when interpreted, runs thus:

Petkhem, (man), son of Petamon, (man), produced by the mistress of the house, Tamtebo; for

the square is a P, the half-circle a T, the third sign a K, the two feathers an E, the next sign an M, spelling the name of Petkem, or Petkhem. The image of the man is figurative, and is attached as a sign of species to Petkem. Then follows the goose and the perpendicular line, spelling se, and meaning son. The plain line, you remember, is N, and stands for an abbreviation of the syllable nen, or an, and this hieroglyphic always distinguishes the genitive case, and therefore means of. After it we have the square P, the arm T, the feather A, the dented parallelogram M, the undulating line N, spelling Petamon. Then follows another figure of a man, which, like the former, is merely a figurative character. The two next signs spell mese, as we have already noticed, and signify produced. The two characters which now follow are symbolico-phonetic; the first is an emblem of power and dominion belonging to a master, but the half-circle that follows, as a mark of the feminine gender, shews that this power belongs to a woman; and the figure of the house that comes next proves that this power is exercised in a house; therefore, the whole group may be rendered by "the mistress of the house." The remaining characters exhibit the name of this mistress to be Tamtebo, for the half-circle is T, the bird A, the parallelogram M, the half-circle T, the leg B, the bird O, which make all together Tamtbo, that is, Tamtebo.

Again, in another legend, [Table 7. fig. 1.] which

is found in two lines round an alabaster vase, we have twenty-one characters; the two first are symbolico-figurative, exhibiting the emblem of a priest. The two first figures of a man are absolutely figuratives. The third is phonetic; the straight line is a grammatical form, denoting the preposition, or article, nen, which, in English, answers to the articles of and to. The remainder are phonetic, and the whole legend would be," the priest of Amon, Astavi, to his son Amonshe," which answers, word for word, to the Coptic; that is, Oueb, the priest; an, of; Amon, Amon; Astavi, Astavi; rome, a man; an, to; shef, or shev, his son; Amonshe, Amonshe; rome, a man; which is neither more nor less than, Astavi, or Astovi, a priest of Amon, made a present of this vase of alabaster to his son Amonshe.

This last name, Amonshe, is, as you perceive, a composition of two words; Amon, the name of the god, and she, son; and it was natural for Astavi to have given to his son a name by which he was placed under the protection of the same deity whose priest he was; for this is a very peculiar characteristic of all the Egyptian names of individuals, that of being generally formed from those of some of their gods.

A curious instance I can give you in the name of Potipherah, the very same which was given to the priest of On, whose daughter Joseph married, by the order of Pharaoh, as it is mentioned in Genesis xli. 45. " and Pharaoh gave him

to wife Asenath, the daughter of Poti-pherah, priest of On." The name of this priest, as well as that of Potiphar, the former master of Joseph, are both spelt, in the Coptic version of the Pentateuch, Petophre, which is a composition of three words, Pet, belonging to, or approved by Hor, the symbolic name of the god Horus, and Re, or Phre, the sun; so that the whole name means, the man who belongs to, or who is under the protection of Horus, and the sun. I exhibit the legend [Table 4. fig. 33. which M. Champollion has found mentioned in a hieroglyphic manuscript obtained by M. Cailliaud for the cabinet of the King of France.

In this legend, the name of Horus and the sun are symbolic; the figure of a man figurative; the rest are phonetic; for the square is a P, the arm a T, the bird and the line Hor, the square a P, the circle re, or phre, spelling Pthorpre, or Pethorphre. The last character, the figure of a man, is figurative, and denotes the species.

And here I think it proper to recall to your mind what I said in a former Lecture about this town of On, to which the Greeks gave the appellation of Heliopolis. On, in the original Egyptian, signifies the sun, which the Greeks called Helios, and, therefore, called Heliopolis the city of Helios, that is, the city of On; and it is rather a remarkable circumstance to find this Egyptian name of On preserved in the sacred pages.

And, since we are now speaking of the name of Joseph's father-in-law, I may as well exhibit to you

also the name of Joseph's wife, written in hieroglyphics. We have mentioned that in Genesis she is called Asenath, which is evidently the same as the Coptic, Aseneith, because the alteration of the sound of one or two vowels, either in Hebrew or in Coptic, is a circumstance that happens almost to every word, for both the Egyptians and the Jews left out the vowels in writing. Now this word Aseneith, or Asneith is a composition of the monosyllable as, belonging to, and Neith, the goddess. [Table 7. fig. 2.]

You remember that the phonetic name of Neith consisted of waving line, N; two feathers, E; and the half-circle, T. Now by adding to these hieroglyphics, the arm, which is an A, and the notched line an S; the whole will be Asneth, or Asneith. M. Champollion, in the first edition of his "Précis du Système Hieroglyphique," produced another legend for the name of this wife of Joseph, he called her Asesi, [Table 7. fig. 3.] a name formed by the monosyllable As, written phonetically by the arm and the notched line, and the symbolic name of the goddess Isis. This interpretation he has abandoned in the second edition; but whether Asneith or Asesi be the original of the name of Joseph's wife, it is very curious to observe a man of letters in France, in our own days, finding, in one of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, a name that so corresponds with the name that is found in our sacred Scriptures.

From the legends I have exhibited, and from

« FöregåendeFortsätt »