It is not with philosophy as with astronomy; the older the observations, the more use they are of to posterity. A lecture of an Egyptian priest upon divinity, morality, or natural history, would not pay the trouble, at this day, of engraving it upon stone; and one of the reasons that I think no such subjects were ever treated in hieroglyphics is, that in all those I ever had an opportunity of seeing, and very few people have seen more, I have constantly found the same figures repeated, which obviously, and without dispute, allude to the history of the Nile, and its different periods of increase; the mode of measuring it, the Etesian winds; in short, such observations as we every day see in an almanack, in which we cannot suppose, that forsaking the obvious import, where the good they did was evident, they should ascribe different meanings to the hieroglyphic, to which no key has been left, and therefore their future inutility must have been foreseen.
I shall content myself in this wide field, to fix upon one famous hieroglyphical personage, which is Tot, the secretary of Osiris, whose function I shall endeavour to explain; if I fail, I am in good company; I give it only as my opinion, and submit it chearfully to the correction of others. The word Tot is Ethiopic, and there can be little doubt it means the dog-star. It was the name given to the first month of the Egyptian year. The meaning of the name, in the language of the province of Siré, is an idol, composed of different heterogeneous pieces; it is found having this signification in many of their books. Thus a naked man is not a Tot, but the body of a naked man, with a dog’s head, an ass’s head, or a serpent instead of a head, is a Tot. According to the import of that word, it is, I suppose, an almanack, or section of the phænomena in the heavens which are to happen in the limited time it is made to comprehend, when exposed for the information of the public; and the more extensive its use is intended to be, the greater number of emblems, or signs of observation, it is charged with.
Besides many other emblems or figures, the common Tot, I think, has in his hand a cross with a handle, as it is called Crux Ansata, which has occasioned great speculation among the decypherers. This cross, fixed to a circle, is supposed to denote the four elements, and to be the symbol of the influence the sun has over them. Jamblichus[260] records, that this cross, in the hand of Tot, is the name of the divine Being that travels through the world. Sozomen[261] thinks it means the life to come, the same with the ineffable image of eternity. Others, strange difference! say it is the phallus, or human genitals, while a later[262] writer maintains it to be the mariner’s compass. My opinion, on the contrary is, that, as this figure was exposed to the public for the reason I have mentioned, the Crux Ansata in his hand was nothing else but a monogram of his own name TO, and O T T signifying TOT, or as we write Almanack upon a collection published for the same purpose.
London Published December 1st. 1789 by G. Robinson & Co
The changing of these emblems, and the multitude of them, produced the necessity of contrasting their size, and this again a consequential alteration in the original forms; and a stile, or small portable instrument, became all that was necessary for finishing these small Tots, instead of a large graver or carving tool, employed in making the large ones. But men, at last, were so much used to the alteration, as to know it better than under its primitive form, and the engraving became what we may call the first elements, or root, in preference to the original.
The reader will see, that, in my history of the civil wars in Abyssinia, the king, forced by rebellion to retire to the province of Tigré, and being at Axum, found a stone covered with hieroglyphics, which, by the many inquiries I made after inscriptions, and some conversations I had had with him, he guessed was of the kind which I wanted. Full of that princely goodness and condescension that he ever honoured me with, throughout my whole stay, he brought it with him when he returned from Tigré, and was restored to his throne at Gondar.
It seems to me to be one of those private Tots, or portable almanacks, of the most curious kind. The length of the whole stone is fourteen inches, and six inches broad, upon, a base three inches high, projecting from the block itself, and covered with hieroglyphics. A naked figure of a man, near six inches, stands upon two crocodiles, their heads turned different ways. In each of his hands he holds two serpents, and a scorpion, all by the tail, and in the right hand hangs a noose, in which is suspended a ram or goat. On the left hand he holds a lion by the tail. The figure is in great relief; and the head of it with that kind of cap or ornament which is generally painted upon the head of the figure called Isis, but this figure is that of a man. On each side of the whole-length figure, and above it, upon the face of the stone where it projects, are marked a number of hieroglyphics of all kinds. Over this is a very remarkable representation; it is an old head, with very strong features, and a large bushy beard, and upon it a high cap ribbed or striped. This I take to be the Cnuph, or Animus Mundi, though Apuleus, with very little probability, says this was made in the likeness of no creature whatever. The back of the stone is divided into eight compartments[263], from the top to the bottom, and these are filled with hieroglyphics in the last stage, before they took the entire resemblance of letters. Many are perfectly formed; the Crux Ansata appears in one of the compartments, and Tot in another. Upon the edge, just above where it is broken, is 1119, so fair and perfect in form, that it might serve as an example of caligraphy, even in the present times; 45 and 19, and some other arithmetical figures, are found up and down among the hieroglyphics.
No. 2
A Table of hieroglyphics, found at axum 1771.