Lettre à M. Dacier, ... relative à l'alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques

type, it would have been sufficient to have before one's eyes, written in pure hieroglyphs, two proper names of Greek kings previously known and containing several letters used in both, such as Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Alexander and Berenice, and so on.

The hieroglyphic text of the Rosetta inscription, which would have lent itself so happily to this research, presented, because of its fractures, only the single name of Ptolemy.

The obelisk found on the island of Philae, and recently transported to London, also contains the hieroglyphic name of a Ptolemy (see my plate I, number 23), formed with the same signs as in the Rosetta Inscription, also enclosed in a cartouche an oval frame enclosing a royal name (1), and it is followed by a second cartouche which must necessarily contain the proper name of a woman, of a Lagid queen a queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty, since this cartouche is terminated by the hieroglyphic signs of the feminine gender, signs which also terminate the hieroglyphic proper names of all Egyptian goddesses without exception (2). The obelisk was linked, it is said, to a base bearing a Greek inscription which is a petition from the priests of Isis at Philae, addressed to King Ptolemy, to Cleopatra his sister, and to Cleopatra his wife (3). If this obelisk and the hiero-

(1) See my Observations on the Egyptian obelisk from the island of Philae, in the Encyclopedic Review, March 1822 issue; and the cartouche of the Rosetta inscription, following this memoir plate I, number 22.
(2) See my plate I, number 21.
(3) We owe to Mr. Letronne a learned explanation of this inscrip-