May6] PROCEEDINGS. [1890.\"^, with whichthe god's nameveryfrequentlybegins,express in
everyothercase a syllable beginning withs? If it be granted that
eachof these signs is polyphonous, wherecan a case be found of
four polyphonous signsbeinghomophonousin more thanone value?
Are Egyptologists to shut their eyesto these and other difficulties
whichno one has attempted to solve? If it can be shown that the
god'snameis written keb, let it be so called wheneverit is so written,
but it is most unscholar-like to read it so when it is written *jj* J
or ^J, whichis most certainlySeb. Qeb a\\ haveprovedto be
an erroneous transcriptof the hieratic <r^, J.- When I protested in a recent noteagainstthe practice of
callingthe goddess <> Sechetby the name Somchitor Sechmet,
I carefully avoideddenyingthe existence of a goddess whomight
rightfullybearthe latter name. AndI was fully awarethatthere
was evidence whichmighttemptthe unwary to identify Sechetwith
Sechmet. But the temptation is precisely one of those whicha well
groundedscholaris bound to resist.
Amongthe deities whose pictures are given in the different
copiesof the Book of the Am-Tuat thereis one whose nameoccurs
thereas () , and in a much more ancienttext, both (> and
{e.g.,on the. NowSarcophagussurely,it of may Necht-her-heb)be said, hereas l(| is evidencevs. o,* of the but veryelse-
bestkind. Theevidence is certainly undeniable,but what do the
witnessesreallysay? They mustbe rightly understoodbeforeany
conclusionis drawn.
Nearlya quarter of a century ago M. Chabas, on the authority of
thesevery texts, asserted thatthe ~w~w in the plural pronounswas
non-phonetic. "Laquestion est tranchee par la variante decisive
....?(ITT?= W Donc rff = P 1 = ce.»t
In reply to this I pointed out that the texts read,not P ^"p but
P TiT sen ' tw0>' and that no one would maintainthat the Coptic It
in CIti.T correspondedto a non-phonetic «w>^,J M. Chabas was* Antiquitis, V, pi. 41, 5. Sharpe, Imcr.,II, 12, line 6.
t Voyage a" tin Egyptien, p. 349.
J Zeitschrift, 1867,p. 53.n
36S