April] PROCEEDINGS. [1890.
has the value £\ ^ |' from the earliest times, and rOJl occurs
with the value of ■£} ^ in the inscriptions of Rameses II at
Karnak.*
The usual Phoeniciantranscription"""VDIN's m exact agreement
with the hieroglyphic reading,and is more correctthan"HDN.
It is a very grave blunderto take the sign o or q in the formsJ] O, jj O, ] O &c, as having the value ra. The sign represents not
the Sun but, as Champollion pointedout from the very first,the eye
ball,used (especiallyin cursive writing)instead of the entire eye
aru 'attributes.' Andevenin the Turin Todtenbuch(c. 15, 46; we
have \q\J J
Thenameswhichbeginwiththe letter J h have nothingto do
with that of Isis. They are different appellatives, and may even
representdifferentpersonificationsof the Dawn or Sunset. | [I <^> ^
Usert,' the powerful one,'is not a variant but an appellative of Isis.
And the same thing,I believe, mustbe said of ^^ ^ Aaset. The
meaning is not easy to recognise under this orthography, but
1 J^ J\ ^as 's a very anc'ent word signifying " quick, swift)
speedy." A man tells his donkey in a picture of the pyramid period
\ Bb. J\ ^^ aas-ek, "quick!" The word still exists in the
CopticIHC.
The name Mf|$ is not a variant of |]r^t> but should be
read Sexit. It is written HO 1) <= tfl 'n *^e '"sc'P'i0118 of RamesesII
at Karnak, § where it is brought into connection with the verb
jM£3 Sexit' and alS° Whh thC W°rdS Ml0^^!^
sexaita qen, ' the valiant hunter.' The pictures given in Cham-
pollion'sMonuments,pi. 52, from the temple of Dakke are interest
ing, but they are of a late period, and seem onlyto imply personifica-* Champollion, Notices,H, 187.
t Denim., II, 80, c.
I Lanzone, Dizionario,p. 813 ; Brugsch, Diet.Gcogr.,p. 379, and 1329.
§ Champollion, Notices,II, p. 41 and 42.
345