* There has been in preparation since 1897 an exhaustive dictionary, to be published under the auspices of the German government.  The academies of Berlin, Gottingen, Leipsig and Munich have charge of the work, and they have nominated as their respective commissioners Professors Erman, Pietsch- mann, Steindorff, and Ebers (since deceased).  This colossal undertaking is the fitting culmination of the labours of a century in the Egyptian language and writing.  The collection and arrangement of material are estimated to occupy eleven years; printing may thus be begun about 1908.

Despite its uncritical method of compilation, Levy’s bulky Vocabulary (1887-1804), with its two supplements and long tables of signs, is indispensable in this branch of research, since it gives a multitude of references to rare words and forms of words that occur in notable publications of recent date, such as Maspero’s excellent edition of the Pyramid Texts.  There are also some important special indices, such as Stern’s excellent “Glossary of the Papyrus Ebers,” Piehl’s “Vocabulary of the Harris Papyrus,” Erman’s “Glossary of the Westcar Papyrus,” and Doctor Pudge’s “Vocabulary” of the XVIIIth Dynasty “Book of the Dead.”  Schack’s Index to the Pyramid Texts will prove to be an important work, and the synoptic index of parallel chapters prefixed to the work is of the greatest value in the search for variant spellings.

In 1872, Brugsch, in his “Grammaire Hieroglyphique,” published a useful list of signs with their phonetic and ideographic values, accompanying them with references to his Dictionary, and distinguishing some of the specially early and late forms.  We may also note the careful list in Lepsius’ “AEgyptische Lesestucke,” 1883.

Champollion in his “Grammaire Egyptienne,” issued after the author’s death in 1836, gave descriptive names to large numbers of the signs.  In 1848, to the first volume of Bunsen’s “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” Birch contributed a long list of hieroglyphics, with descriptions and statements of their separate phonetic and ideographic values.  De Rouge, in his “Catalogue des signes hieroglyphiques de l’imprimerie nationale,” 1851, attached to each of many hundreds of signs and varieties of signs a short description, often very correct.  He again dealt with the subject in 1867, and published a “Catalogue Raisonne” of the more usual signs in the first livraison of his “Chrestomathie Egyptienne.”  Useful to the student as these first lists were, in the early stages of decipherment, they are now of little value.  For, at the time they were made, the fine early forms were mostly unstudied, and the signs were taken without discrimination from texts of all periods; moreover, the outlines of the signs were inaccurately rendered, their colours unnoted, and their phonetic and ideographic powers very imperfectly determined.  Thus, whenever doubt was possible as to the object represented by a sign, little external help was forthcoming for correct identification.  To a present-day student of the subject, the scholarly understanding of De Rouge and the ingenuity of Birch are apparent, but the aid which they afford him is small.