Besides many other emblems or figures, the common Tot, I think, has in his hand a cross with a handle, as it is called _Crux Ansata_, which has occasioned great speculation among the decypherers. This cross, fixed to a circle, is supposed to denote the _four elements_, and to be the symbol of the influence the sun has over them. Jamblichus[260] records, that this cross, in the hand of Tot, is the name of the _divine Being_ that travels through the world. Sozomen[261] thinks it means the _life_ to come, the same with the ineffable image of eternity. Others, strange difference! say it is the _phallus_, or human genitals, while a later[262] writer maintains it to be the mariner’s compass. My opinion, on the contrary is, that, as this figure was exposed to the public for the reason I have mentioned, the Crux Ansata in his hand was nothing else but a monogram of his own name TO, and [TOT] signifying TOT, or as we write Almanack upon a collection published for the same purpose. [Illustration: _London Published December 1^{st}. 1789 by G. Robinson & Co_] The changing of these emblems, and the multitude of them, produced the necessity of contrasting their size, and this again a consequential alteration in the original forms; and a stile, or small portable instrument, became all that was necessary for finishing these small _Tots_, instead of a large graver or carving tool, employed in making the large ones. But men, at last, were so much used to the alteration, as to know it better than under its primitive form, and the engraving became what we may call the first elements, or root, in preference to the original. The reader will see, that, in my history of the civil wars in Abyssinia, the king, forced by rebellion to retire to the province of Tigré, and being at Axum, found a stone covered with hieroglyphics, which, by the many inquiries I made after inscriptions, and some conversations I had had with him, he guessed was of the kind which I wanted. Full of that princely goodness and condescension that he ever honoured me with, throughout my whole stay, he brought it with him when he returned from Tigré, and was restored to his throne at Gondar.