ENCHORIAL PROPER NAMES.
From these specimens, we are also enabled to make some further inferences respecting the “popular” system of writing among the Egyptians. They show incontestably, that the employment of the alphabet, discovered by Akerblad, is not altogether confined to foreign, or at least to Grecian names: it is applicable, for example, very readily, to the words Lubais, Tbaeais, Phabis, and perhaps to some others. But they exhibit also unequivocal traces of a kind of syllabic writing, in which the names of some of the deities seem to have been principally employed, in order to compose that of the individual concerned: thus it appears, that wherever bothMandNoccur, either together, or separated by a vowel, the symbol of the god Ammon or Amun is almost uniformly employed: for example inAmenothes,Amonorytius,Amonrasonther, ChiMNaraus, PsenAMUNis, and SnachoMNeus, in which we find neitherMnorN, but the symbol forAmmon, or Jupiter. It follows therefore, that such must have been the original pronunciation of the word, and that this deity was not called eitherHOorNO, as Akerblad was disposed to imagine. In the same manner we have traces of Osiris, Arueris, Isis, and Re; inOsoroeris,Petosiris,Senpoeris,Arsiesis,Maesis, andPeteartres. TheSE, in PSEnamunis andSenerieus, is the symbol for a child, and is probably a contraction ofSHERI: the gender seems to be distinguished in the enchorial name, while the distinction is lost in the alphabetical mode of writing.