the human voice, which seems to flow on in an unbroken
stream of endlessly varied modulations and intonations, may really be
analyzed into a comparatively limited number of component sounds--into a
few hundreds of syllables. That wonderful idea conceived, it was only
a matter of time until it would occur to some other enterprising genius
that by selecting an arbitrary symbol to represent each one of these
elementary sounds it would be possible to make a written record of the
words of human speech which could be reproduced--rephonated--by some
one who had never heard the words and did not know in advance what this
written record contained. This, of course, is what every child learns
to do now in the primer class, but we may feel assured that such an
idea never occurred to any human being until the peculiar forms of
pictographic writing just referred to had been practised for many
centuries. Yet, as we have said, some genius of prehistoric Egypt
conceived the idea and put it into practical execution, and the
hieroglyphic writing of which the Egyptians were in full possession at
the very beginning of what we term the historical period made use
of this phonetic system along with the ideographic system already
described.

So fond were the Egyptians of their pictorial symbols used
ideographically that they clung to them persistently throughout the
entire period of Egyptian history. They used symbols as phonetic
equivalents very frequently, but they never learned to depend upon them
exclusively. The scribe always interspersed his phonetic signs with some
other signs intended as graphic aids. After spelling a word out in full,
he added a picture, sometimes even two or three pictures, representative
of the individual thing, or at least of the type of thing to which the
word belongs. Two or three illustrations will make this clear.

Thus qeften, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a monkey
is added as a determinative; second, qenu, cavalry, after being spelled,
is made unequivocal by the introduction of a picture of a horse; third,
temati, wings, though spelled elaborately, has pictures of wings added;
and fourth, tatu, quadrupeds, after being spelled, has a picture of
a quadruped, and then the picture of a hide, which is the usual
determinative of a quadruped, followed by three dashes to indicate the
plural number.

It must not be supposed, however, that it was a mere whim which led the
Egyptians to the use of