signs were intermingled, without order, in accordance with the taste of the writer; and that the words were one while abundantly, and another while sparingly, interspersed with symbols. Here the funereal hymns of the Ritual, or Book of the Dead, so often repeated in the papyri, came to his help; for sometimes, in these writings, the words were expressed in symbols, and sometimes in alphabetical signs: the latter disclosed the secret of the former, and so the grammar of hieroglyphography came to be conclusively established. Shall we not, then, in admiration of their fruitful labours, invoke the favour of the Horus, the powerful, the sanctified of truth and wisdom, on these our Egyptographical pioneers, sons of the sun, lords of the diadems, beloved of science, children of genius and industry, establishers of alphabets—the de Sacy, Akerblad, Young, Champollion the resplendent, Lepsius, Hinckes, Brughsch, Saulcy, de Rougé, Birch, the Tum of the western hemisphere, approved of the learned, Bonomi, Tomlinson, and all the rest of the scholarly host, beloved of the birds, which follow in their wake like the stars of the firmament. To all and every, we, lord of the panegyrics, piercer of the sheep, convey our warmest congratulations, veneration, and respect, and wish for them a strong and pure life. [37] In the centre of the southern Egyptian gallery of the British Museum, “is placed the celebrated Rosetta stone; it is a tablet of black basalt, having three inscriptions, two of them in the Egyptian language, but in two different characters (hieroglyphic and enchorial); the third in Greek. The inscriptions are to the same purport in each, being a decree of the priesthood at Memphis in honour of Ptolemy Epiphanes, about the year B.C. 196. This stone has furnished the key to the interpretation of the Egyptian characters.” There is likewise, in the same gallery, “a cast of a similar trilingual tablet found at San, being a decree of the priests at Canopus in honour of Ptolemy Euergetes I. and Berenice, B.C. 238.” (_Birch._) San, it will be remembered, is “the field of Zoan of the Bible.” As we float gently away adown the sleepy stream of the Nile, luxuriating in the dreamy ease of Dahabeeyah life, to our far-away northern and western home, let us try to summarise the results of our exploration into the history of Our Obelisk and its stately family. I.—USERTESEN I., a Pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty, corresponding with the year 3064 B.C., supplies us with the earliest example of an obelisk, in the venerable monolith still standing at Heliopolis. Its consort is lost, but the pedestal has been recently cleared of rubbish to prove its former existence. The Heliopolis or Matareeah obelisk was originally capped with metal, which has left its mark on the pyramidion; and its shaft is engraven with a solitary column of boldly carved hieroglyphs.