THE HIEROGLYPHICS.--We owe our knowledge of ancient Egypt chiefly to hieroglyphical writing. The hieroglyphs, except those denoting numbers, were pictures of objects. The writing is of three kinds. The _first_, the hieroglyphical, is composed of literal pictures, as a circle, O, for the sun, a curved line for the moon, a pointed oval for the mouth. The _second_ sort of characters, the hieratic, and the _third_, the demotic, are curtailed pictures, which can thus be written more rapidly. They are seldom seen on the monuments, but are the writing generally found on the papyrus rolls or manuscripts. They are written from right to left. The hieroglyphs proper may be written either way, or in a perpendicular line. In the demotic, or people's writing, the characters are somewhat more curtailed, or abridged, than in the hieratic, or priestly, style. There were four methods of using the hieroglyphics in historical times. _First_, there were the primary, representational characters, the literal pictures. _Secondly_, the characters were used figuratively, as symbols. Thus a circle, O, meant not only the sun, but also "day"; the crescent denoted not only the moon, but also "a month;" a pen and inkstand signified "writing," etc. So one object was substituted for another analogous to it,--as the picture of a boot in a trap, which stood for "deceit." A conventional emblem, too, might represent the object. Thus, the hawk denoted the sun, two water-plants meant Upper and Lower Egypt. _Thirdly_, hieroglyphics were used as determinatives. That is, an object would be denoted by letters (in a way that we shall soon explain), and a picture be added _to determine_, or make clear, what was meant. After proper names, they designated the sex; after the names of other classes, as animals, they specified the particular genus. _Fourthly_, the bulk of the hieroglyphs are phonetic. They stand for sounds. The picture stood for the initial sound of the name of the object depicted. Thus the picture of an eagle, _akhôm_, represented "A." Unfortunately, numerous objects were employed for a like purpose, to indicate the same sound. Hence the number of characters was multiplied. The whole number of signs used in writing is not less than nine hundred or a thousand. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone--a large black slab of stone--with an identical inscription in hieroglyphics, in demotic and in Greek, furnished to _Champollion_ (1810) and to _Young_ the clew to the deciphering of the Egyptian writing, and thus the key to the sense of the monumental inscriptions. The Egyptian manuscripts were made of the pith of the byblus plant, cut into strips. These were laid side by side horizontally, with another layer of strips across them; the two layers being united by paste, and subjected to a heavy pressure. The Egyptians wrote with a reed, using black and red ink.