HIEROGLYPHICS.[ToList]
"In your transformation as golden sperbe you have accomplished it."
2. In the same manner, the tropical hieroglyphics might be alone or in company with the word written phonetically; and the expression "to write," skhai, might be followed or not by its tropical hieroglyphic, the "pen and inkstand," as its determinative sign. 3. The emblematic figure, a hawk-headed god, bearing the disk, signifying the "sun," might also be alone, or after the name "Ra" written phonetically, as a determinative sign; and as a general rule the determinative followed, instead of preceding the names. Determinatives are of two kinds—ideograms, and generic determinatives: the first were the pictures of the object spoken of; the second, conventional symbols of the class of notions expressed by the word.
4. Phonetic. Phonetic characters or signs were those expressive of sounds. They are either purely alphabetic or syllabic. All the other Egyptian phonetic signs have syllabic values, which are resolvable into combinations of the letters of the alphabet. This phonetic principle being admitted, the numbers of figures used to represent a sound might have been increased almost without limit, and any hieroglyphic might stand for the first letter of its name. So copious an alphabet would have been a continual source of error. The characters, therefore, thus applied, were soon fixed, and the Egyptians practically confined themselves to particular hieroglyphics in writing certain words.
