[Illustration:  302a.jpg HIEROGLYPHICS]

As aids to memory such pictures are obviously of advantage, but this advantage in the modern view is outweighed by the cumbrousness of the system of writing as a whole.

Why was such a complex system retained?  Chiefly, no doubt, because the Egyptians, like all other highly developed peoples, were conservatives.  They held to their old method after a better one had been invented.  But this inherent conservatism was enormously aided, no doubt, by the fact that the Egyptian language, like the Chinese, has many words that have a varied significance, making it seem necessary, or at least highly desirable, either to spell such words with different signs, or, having spelled them in the same way, to introduce the varied determinatives.

Here are some examples of discrimination between words of the same sound by the use of different signs: 

[Illustration:  302b.jpg HIEROGLYPHICS]

Here, it will be observed, exactly the same expedient is adopted which we still retain when we discriminate between words of the same sound by different spelling, as to, two, too; whole, hole; through, threw, etc.

But the more usual Egyptian method was to resort to the determinatives; the result seems to us most extraordinary.  After what has been said, the following examples will explain themselves: 

[Illustration:  303.jpg HIEROGLYPHICS]

It goes without saying that the great mass of people in Egypt were never able to write at all.  Had they been accustomed to do so, the Egyptians would have been a nation of artists.  Even as the case stands, a remarkable number of men must have had their artistic sense well developed, for the birds, animals, and human figures constantly presented on their hieroglyphic scrolls are drawn with a fidelity which the average European of to-day would certainly find far beyond his skill.

Until Professor Petrie* published his “Medum,” and Professor Erman his “Grammar,” no important work on Egyptian hieroglyphic writing had appeared in recent years.

* The information as to the modern investigation in hieroglyphics has been obtained from F. L. Griffith’s paper in the 6th Memoir of the Archaeological Survey on Hieroglyphics from the collections of the Egypt Exploration Fund, London, 1894-95.

Professor Petrie’s “Medum” is the mainstay of the student in regard to examples of form for the old kingdom; but for all periods detailed and trustworthy drawings and photographs are found among the enormous mass of published texts.*

To these may now be added the 105 coloured signs in Beni Hasan, Part III., and still more numerous examples in the Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund (Archaeological Survey), for the season 1895-96.