Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/543

Rh top to the bottom, and these are filled with hieroglyphics in the last stage, before they took the entire resemblance of letters. Many are perfectly formed; the Crux Ansata appears in one of the compartments, and Tot in another. Upon the edge, just above where it is broken, is 1119, so fair and perfect in form, that it might serve as an example of caligraphy, even in the present times; 45 and 19, and some other arithmetical figures, are found up and down among the hieroglyphics.

I suppose was what formerly the Egyptians called a book, or almanack; a collection of these was probably hung up in some conspicuous place, to inform the public of the state of the heavens, and seasons, and diseases, to be expected in the course of them, as is the case in the English almanacks at this day. Hermes is said to have composed 36,535 books, probably of this sort, or they might contain the correfspondent astronomical observations made in a certain time at Meroë, Ophir, Axum, or Thebes, communicated to be hung up for the use of the neighbouring cities. Porphyry * gives a particular account of the Egyptian alma- nacks. "What is comprised in the Egyptian almanacks, says he, contains but a small part of the Hermaic institutions; all that relates to the rising and setting of the moon and planets, and of the stars and their influence, and also some advice upon diseases."

is very remarkable, that, besides my Tot here described, there are five or six, precisely the same in all respects, al-

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 * Porpyhry Epist. ad Anebonem,