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

This is how, among the phonetic hieroglyphs whose sounds are already recognized, the hawk, which expressed life or the soul ahé life original: "ⲁϩⲉ, ⲁϩⲓ, ahé, ahi", or any bird in general, called halét bird original: "ϩⲁⲗⲏⲧ halét" in Egyptian, probably became the sign for the sound A. Likewise, the hieroglyph called the water sign, which in ideographic texts certainly represents the Egyptian preposition n of original: "ⲛ de", became the sign for the sound N. The mouth, in Egyptian ro mouth original: "ⲣⲟ ro", was chosen to represent the Greek consonant R original: "P", and so on. We can similarly understand how the sound T was expressed interchangeably. It was represented either by the segment of a sphere, since this character in ideographic writing is the sign for the feminine article ti or té the original: "ϯ ti ou ⲧⲉ té", or by an open hand, which was called tot palm, hand original: "ⲧⲟⲧ tot (vola, manus)" in the Egyptian language. The same applies to all other sounds rendered by different characters, as we will soon establish through more numerous examples. This multiplicity of signs has no other origin than the procedures inherent to the method we have just described.

Furthermore, the demotic characters used to phonetically express proper names are the same as the characters we already knew from the Rosetta Stone. These characters are actually hieratic priestly cursive characters that correspond exactly to the hieroglyphic characters whose phonetic use we have also just recognized.

We have seen that the sound K was rendered, in the names Cleopatra original: "Κλεοπατρα" and Alexandros original: "Αλεξανδρος", by two signs that