The next step would have been to remove the now useless scaffolding, leaving a purely alphabetical writing as the completed structure.  Looking at the matter from the modern standpoint, it seems almost incredible that so intelligent a people as the Egyptians should have failed to make this advance.  Yet the facts stand, that as early as the time of the Pyramid Builders, say four thousand years B.C.,* the Egyptians had made the wonderful analysis of sounds, without which the invention of an alphabet would be impossible.

* The latest word on the subject of the origin of the alphabet takes back some of the primitive phonetic signs to prehistoric times.  Among these prehistoric signs are the letters A, E, I, O, U, (V), F and M.

They had set aside certain of their hieroglyphic symbols and given them alphabetical significance.  They had learned to write their words with the use of this alphabet; and it would seem as if, in the course of a few generations, they must come to see how unnecessary was the cruder form of picture-writing which this alphabet would naturally supplant; but, in point of fact, they never did come to a realisation of this seemingly simple proposition.  Generation after generation and century after century, they continued to use their same cumbersome, complex writing, and it remained for an outside nation to prove that an alphabet pure and simple was capable of fulfilling all the conditions of a written language.

Thus in practice there are found in the hieroglyphics the strangest combinations of ideographs, syllabic signs, and alphabetical signs or true letters used together indiscriminately.

It was, for example, not at all unusual, after spelling a word syllabically or alphabetically, to introduce a figure giving the idea of the thing intended, and then even to supplement this with a so-called determinative sign or figure: 

[Illustration:  301.jpg DETERMINATIVE SIGNS]

Here Queften, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a monkey is added as a determinative; second, Qenu, cavalry, after being spelled, is made unequivocal by the introduction of a picture of a horse; third, Temati, wings, though spelled elaborately, has pictures of wings added; and fourth, Tatu, quadrupeds, after being spelled, has a picture of a quadruped, and then the picture of a hide, which is the usual determinative of a quadruped, followed by three dashes to indicate the plural number.*

     * Another illustration of the plural number is seen in the
     sign Pau, on page 298, where the plural is indicated in the
     same manner.

These determinatives are in themselves so interesting, as illustrations of the association of ideas, that it is worth while to add a few more examples.  The word Pet, which signifies heaven, and which has also the meaning up or even, is represented primarily by what may be supposed to be a conventionalised picture of the covering to the earth.  But this picture, used as a determinative, is curiously modified in the expression of other ideas, as it symbolises evening when a closed flower is added, and night when a star hangs in the sky, and rain or tempest when a series of zigzag lines, which by themselves represent water, are appended.