picture of a range of hills distinguished foreign localities (mountains being unknown in the Nile Valley). Some of these determinatives in time came to be used instead of the words they originally determined; and thus arose word-signs (_ideograms_), which, though at first comparatively few, soon increased in number. In this way, the picture of the city’s plan, originally a mere determinative, was eventually used as the written sign of the word city itself. The Egyptian system of writing is thus extremely complicated, consisting, as it does, of an alphabet, syllabic signs, and word-signs (_ideograms_), supplemented by a system of determinatives. The whole number of signs exceeds 2000. (_See Moldehnke’s “Language of the Ancient Egyptians.”_) =Hieroglyphics.=—The oldest form of Egyptian writing is called hieroglyphic;[13] its characters are well-drawn pictures of natural objects; but these pictures had no ideographic values. They were originally, as above stated, partly determinative in their nature. The oldest hieroglyphical texts that have come down to us have been referred to the II. Dynasty (now estimated at about 4000 B.C.). The youngest texts date from the period of the Roman Empire. The inconvenience experienced in writing the hieroglyphics early led to the invention of abbreviated forms. These were of two kinds, viz., the _linear hieroglyphics_, and a derivative therefrom, the cursive _hieratic character_, suitable for rapid writing. On some of the stone blocks in the Pyramid of Cheops (_ke’ops_), the monarch’s name is inscribed in hieratic characters; while the oldest texts of the so-called Book of the Dead are in linear hieroglyphics, which remained the favorite form for this religious work, as well as for most funeral papyri. There are two kinds of hieratic—one closely resembling the old linear hieroglyphics, and in common use during the Middle Empire (2100-1700 B.C.); the other, a simplified and abbreviated form, introduced early in the period styled the New Empire (about 1530 B.C.). From this second form of hieratic, the Phœnicians derived their alphabet (see p. 20, and plate p. 87). In the seventh century B.C., the hieratic gave place to the still simpler _demotic_, which has not inaptly been called Egyptian short-hand. LITERARY REMAINS. Egyptian literature, like other ancient literatures, passed through periods of development and decay. It had its dawn or archaic period, its classical and Augustan era, and its age of decline.