ferent phonograms can be found.
The number of those commonly employed in good writing is between
seventy and eighty. The most important phonograms are the _uniliteral_
or _alphabetic_ signs, twenty-four in number in the Old Kingdom and
without any homophones: later these were increased by homophones to
thirty. Of _biliteral_ phonograms--each expressing a combination of
two consonants--there were about fifty commonly used: some fifteen or
twenty were rarely used. As Egyptian roots seldom exceeded three
letters, there was no need for _triliteral_ phonograms to spell them.
There is, however, one triliteral phonogram, the eagle, [HRG], _tyw_,
or _tiu_ (?), used for the plural ending of adjectives in _y_ formed
from words ending in _t_ (whether radical or the feminine ending).

The phonetic values of the signs are derived from their word-sign
values and consist usually of the bare root, though there are rare
examples of the retention of a flexional ending; they often ignore
also the weaker consonants of the root, and on the same principle
reduce a repeated consonant to a single one, as when the hoe [HRG],
_hnn_, has the phonetic value _hn_. The history of some of the
alphabetic signs is still very obscure, but a sufficient number of
them have been explained to make it nearly certain that the values of
all were obtained on the same principles.[15] Some of the ancient
words from which the phonetic values were derived probably fell very
early into disuse, and may never be discoverable in the texts that
have come down to us. The following are among those most easily
explained:--

[HRG: i], reed flower, value _y_ and [Hebrew: alef]; from [HRGs:
i-A-Hn], _y'_, "reed."

(It seems as if the two values _y_ and [Hebrew: alef] were obtained
by choosing first one and then the other of the two semi-consonants
composing the name. They are much confused, and a conventional symbol
_l_ has to be adopted for rendering [HRG: i].)

[HRG: a], forearm, value '([Hebrew: ayin]); from [HRGs: a:Z1],
'([Hebrew: ayin]), "hand."

[HRG: r], mouth, value _r_; from [HRGs: r:Z1], _r_, "mouth."

[HRG: X], belly and teats, value _h_; from [HRGs: X:t*Z1],
_h.t_, "belly." (The feminine ending is here, as usual,
neglected.)

[HRG: S], tank, value _s_; from [HRGs: S:Z1], _s_,
"tank."

[HRG: q], slope of earth value _q_