Part 33 (1/2)
”_Wait!_ Wait until we have translated everything literally. And, Mr.
Burke, it might make it easier for us both if you would remember that I have had the pleasure of deciphering many hundreds of papyri before you had ever heard that there were such things.”
”I beg your pardon,” said the young man in a low voice.
”I beg yours for my impatience,” said the Tracer pleasantly. ”This deciphering always did affect my nerves and shorten my temper. And, no doubt, it is quite as hard on you. Shall we go on, Mr. Burke?”
”If you please, Mr. Keen.”
So the Tracer laid his pencil point on the next symbol
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”That is the symbol for night,” he said; ”and that
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is the water symbol again, as you know; and that
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is the ideograph, meaning a s.h.i.+p. The five reversed crescents
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record the number of days voyage; the sign
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means a house, and is also the letter H in the Egyptian alphabet.
”Under it, again, we have a repet.i.tion of the first symbol meaning _I_, and a repet.i.tion of the second symbol, meaning 'Meris, the King.' Then, below that cartouch, comes a new symbol,
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which is the feminine personal p.r.o.noun, _sentus_, meaning '_she_'; and the first column is completed with the symbol for the ancient Egyptian verb, _nehes_, 'to awake,'
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”And now we take the second column, which begins with the jackal ideograph expressing slyness or cleverness. Under it is the hieroglyph meaning 'to run away,' 'to escape.' And under that, Mr. Burke, is one of the rarest of all Egyptian symbols; a symbol seldom seen on stone or papyrus,
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except in rare references to the mysteries of Isis. The meaning of it, so long in dispute, has finally been practically determined through a new discovery in the cuneiform inscriptions. It is the symbol of two hands holding two _closed_ eyes; and it signifies power.”
”You mean that those ancients understood hypnotism?” asked Burke, astonished.
”Evidently their priests did; evidently hypnotism was understood and employed in certain mysteries. And there is the symbol of it; and under it the hieroglyphs
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