The inscriptions on the pyramids show that at the time of their erection the hieroglyphic system of writing was no longer perfectly understood, and that the hieroglyphical signs were often put there for ornament, without any intended meaning. Even the royal names are rendered doubtful by this, and this prevented my recognizing for a long time the pyramids of the three royal personages who had built the principal temples in Naga, Ben Naga and in Wadi Temêd, and belonged, no doubt, to the most shining period of the Meroitic Empire. I am now sure, that the pyramid, with antechamber arched in the Roman style, in the wall of which Ferlini found the treasure concealed, notwithstanding the slight change in the name, belonged to the same mighty and warlike queen who appears in Naga with her rich dress and her nails almost an inch long. Ferlini’s jewellery, by the circumstance that they belonged to a known, and, it seems to me, the greatest of all Meroitic queens, who built almost all the preserved temples of the island, acquired a far greater importance for the history of the Ethiopian art in which they now take a certain position. The purchase of that remarkable treasure is a considerable gain for our Museum. At that time an Ethiopian demotic character, resembling the Egyptian demotic in its letters, although with a very limited alphabet of twenty-five to thirty signs, was more generally employed and understood than the hieroglyphics. The writing is read from right to left as there, but always with a distinct division of the words by two strong points. I have already found twenty-six such demotic inscriptions, some on steles and libatory slabs, some in the antechambers of the pyramids over the figures in the processions (which are generally proceeding towards the deceased king with palm-branches), some outside on the smooth surfaces of the pyramids, and always plainly of the same date as the representations, and not added at a subsequent period. The decipherment of this writing will perhaps not be difficult on a narrower examination, and would then give us the first certain sounds of the Ethiopian language spoken here at that time, and decide its relation to the Egyptian; while the almost perfect identity of the Ethiopian and Egyptian hieroglyphics would till now give decidedly no sanction to any conclusion as to a similar identity between the two languages. On the contrary, it seems, and may be safely asserted for the later Meroitic period, that the Egyptian hieroglyphics were taken from Egypt as the sacred monumental writing, without change, but also without a full comprehension of their signification. The few continually recurring signs prove that the Ethiopian-demotic writing is purely alphabetic, which must very much lighten the labour of decipherment. The partition of the words is perhaps taken from the Roman writing. The analogy with the development of writing in Egypt, however, proceeded