e phonetic and ideographic
values. De Rouge, in his "Catalogue des signes hieroglyphiques de
l'imprimerie nationale," 1851, attached to each of many hundreds of
signs and varieties of signs a short description, often very correct.
He again dealt with the subject in 1867, and published a "Catalogue
Raisonne" of the more usual signs in the first _livraison_ of his
"Chrestomathie Egyptienne." Useful to the student as these first lists
were, in the early stages of decipherment, they are now of little
value. For, at the time they were made, the fine early forms were mostly
unstudied, and the signs were taken without discrimination from texts
of all periods; moreover, the outlines of the signs were inaccurately
rendered, their colours unnoted, and their phonetic and ideographic
powers very imperfectly determined. Thus, whenever doubt was possible
as to the object represented by a sign, little external help was
forthcoming for correct identification. To a present-day student of the
subject, the scholarly understanding of De Rouge and the ingenuity of
Birch are apparent, but the aid which they afford him is small.

As a result of recent discoveries, some very interesting researches have
been made in Egyptian paleography in what is known as the _signary_.*
We reach signs which seem to be disconnected from the known hieroglyphs,
and we are probably touching on the system of geometrical signs used
from prehistoric to Roman times in Egypt, and also in other countries
around the Mediterranean.

* The information regarding the alphabet here given is
derived from the Eighteenth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration
Fund, 1899-1890.

How far these signs are originally due to geometrical invention, or how
far due to corruption of some picture, we cannot say. But in any case
they stood so detached from the hieroglyphic writing and its hieratic
and demotic derivations, that they must be treated as a separate system.
For the present the best course is to show here the similarity of forms
between these marks and those known in Egypt in earlier and later times,
adding the similar forms in the Karian and Spanish alphabets. The usage
of such forms in the same country from about 6000 B.C. down to 1200
B.C., or later, shows that we have to deal with a definite system. And
it seems impossible to separate that used in 1200 B.C. in Egypt from the
similar forms found in other lands connected with Egypt from 800 B.C.
down to later times: