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

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new forms of the K Greek Kappa and the S Greek Sigma which will reappear in several other cartouches. Regarding these variations in general, please allow me, Monsieur, so as not to give too great an extent to the letter you permit me to address to you, to stop pointing them out as we encounter them. I have carefully collected them in the complete alphabet, which forms the last of the plates accompanying my letter. But you can easily satisfy yourself, Monsieur, of the homophony the quality of different signs representing the same sound of these varied signs, since each of them will be found in several other proper names where the reading will otherwise offer you not the slightest uncertainty.

Bringing together the set of phonetic signs that have just been individually collected and which compose the general alphabet, I will now successively place before your eyes, and very briefly, based on the plates of the Description of Egypt, the proper names traced in phonetic hieroglyphs on those monuments of that country which are so well known to us through this

syllabic referring to a system where signs represent syllables rather than single letters established on these two names alone, was completely inapplicable to the numerous phonetic proper names inscribed on the monuments of Egypt. However, Dr. Young in England has performed work on the written monuments of ancient Egypt similar to those which have occupied me for so many years; and his research on the intermediate text and the hieroglyphic text of the Rosetta inscription, as well as on the manuscripts I have identified as hieratic a priestly shorthand script, presents a series of very important results. See Encyclopædia Britannica, supplement, volume IV, part I. Edinburgh, December 1819.