That some of the ancients were not entirely ignorant of the phonetic character of Egyptian writing is certain. We have no evidence, however, that any of them knew how to interpret it. Thus Pliny says, "for those sculptures and likenesses which we see, are Egyptian letters." Porphyry, also, in the "Life of Pythagoras," states that the Egyptians had three different kinds of letters, epistolographical, hieroglyphical, and symbolical. But the most particular account is to be found in Clement of Alexandria. The passage is not without obscurity in some particulars, in others it is direct and plain. We give what seems to be the substance of his meaning, according to the interpretation of Bunsen, who has examined it with great critical care. The English version, as well as the original Greek, may be found in his first volume of "Egypt's place in the World's History." According to Clement, the Egyptians taught, first of all, the method of writing called the epistolographic; secondly, the hieratic, which the sacred scribes employ; and last of all the hieroglyphic. The epistolographic, according to the judgment of the learned, is the same that is sometimes called the enchorial, and sometimes, as by Herodotus and Diodorus, the demotic. It is necessary to speak of these separately. This was the original mode of Egyptian writing. It has been conjectured by some who have speculated on the origin of the art of writing, (and with how near an approximation to truth the readed can judge for himself,) that the earliest attempt at conveying ideas to the mind, by marks addressed to the eye, is to be found in what is usually termed "picture writing." That such a mode has been resorted to by savage nations, as well as by those more or less advanced in civilization, is undoubtedly true. We know, for instance, that among the Indians, as they are termed in our own country, their rude representations of men, and brutes, and other physical objects, delineated on bark or skins, have been used, and are still, to convey information that is intelligible to their own people.

Clement states distinctly that the hieroglyphic characters were used also to express letters (though he does not tell us how they did it); and this brings us to the consideration of their most interesting use as phonetics, or the signs of sound. If the modern reader were merely informed that the ancient Egyptians possessed an alphabet, which had been recently discovered, he would doubtless conclude, from his acquaitance with what are known to him as alphabets, that a certain set of seemingly arbitrary linear characters, to which were attached certain sounds of vowels and consonants, was what had been brough to light. He certainly never would divine, from the announcement, that a very numerous set of pictures of common objects had been most ingeniously made to convey, each, the simple sound of a letter, often without the slightest reference to the character or purposes of the object delineated. He would be much perplexed, for instance, to know why the picture of an owl should M, or that of a hand should indicate a T. When the principle of Egyptian phonetics is explained, the wonder vanishes; and though the modern reader may justly thin that plan comlicated, he will also see that it is quite certain and intelligible in its application. The governing principle in the phonetic system is the simple one hinted at in the last chapter; viz., that a sound is represented by the pictorial image of some physical object; and that the mode of knowing what sound is meant, is to take the name of the object represented, in the colloquial idiom of the ancient Egyptians, and the initial letter or articulation of that name, is the sound or letter indicated. But an example is the best illustration of this principle and none better can be made than that which is furnished to our hand by Mr. Gliddon in his first published lectures.