So soon as the habitual use of the papyrus, with the reed pen and coloured pigments, had developed any uniformity of usage, the customary method of writing by the Egyptian appears to have accorded with that in use among the Hebrew and other Semitic races; though examples do occur of true hieroglyphic papyri written from left to right. But the pictorial character of such writings furnishes another test. It is easier for a right-handed draftsman to draw a profile with the face looking towards the left; and the same influence might be anticipated to affect the direction of the characters incised on the walls of temples and palaces. This has accordingly suggested an available clue to Egyptian right or left-handedness. But the evidence adduced from Egyptian monuments is liable to mislead. A writer in _Nature_ (J. S., 14th April 1870) states as the result of a careful survey of the examples in the British Museum, that the hieroglyphic profiles there generally look to the right, and so suggest the work of a left-handed people. Other and more suggestive evidence from the monuments of Egypt points to the same conclusion, but it is deceptive. The hieroglyphic sculptures of the Egyptians, like the cufic inscriptions in Arabian architecture, are mainly decorative; and are arranged symmetrically for architectural effect. The same principle regulated their introduction on sarcophagi. Of this, examples in the British Museum furnish abundant illustration. On the great sarcophagus of Sebaksi, priest of Phtha, the profiles on the right and left column look towards the centre line; and hence the element of right-handedness is subordinated to decorative requirements. If this is overlooked, the left-handedness ascribed above to the ancient Egyptians may seem to be settled beyond dispute by numerous representations both of gods and men, engaged in the actual process of writing. Among the incidents introduced in the oft-repeated judgment scene of Osiris,--as on the Adytum of the Temple of Dayr el Medineh, of which I have a photograph,--Thoth, the Egyptian God of Letters, stands with the stylus in his left hand, and a papyrus or tablet in his right, and records concerning the deceased, in the presence of the divine judge, the results of the literal weighing in the balance of the deeds done in the body. In other smaller representations of the same scene, Thoth is similarly introduced holding the stylus in his left hand. So also, in the decorations on the wall of the great chamber in the rock-temple of Abou Simbel, Rameses is represented slaying his enemies with a club, which is held in his left hand; and the goddess Pasht is shown decapitating her prisoners with a scimitar also in the left hand. This evidence seems sufficiently direct and indisputable to settle the question; yet further research leaves no doubt that it is illusory. Ample evidence to the contrary is to be found in Champollion’s _Monuments de l’Egypte et