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Griffith 1923

This document summarizes and reviews several recent publications related to ancient Egypt. It discusses a new textbook on hieroglyphs published by M. Drioton, a study of the god Thoth by Professor Patrick Boylan, and a memoir on the ancient branches of the Nile by Prince Omar Toussoon. The reviews provide high-level evaluations of the content and scholarly rigor of each publication while also briefly noting some specific strengths and limitations.

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34 views

Griffith 1923

This document summarizes and reviews several recent publications related to ancient Egypt. It discusses a new textbook on hieroglyphs published by M. Drioton, a study of the god Thoth by Professor Patrick Boylan, and a memoir on the ancient branches of the Nile by Prince Omar Toussoon. The reviews provide high-level evaluations of the content and scholarly rigor of each publication while also briefly noting some specific strengths and limitations.

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NOTICES O F RECENT PUBLICATIONS 127

chair loft vacant by the death of Philippe Virey) has here bound up the.stylographed sheets which he
issued to his students at successive lectures, adding a printed preface and table of contents, a glossarial
index and an index of subjects. A really excellent introduction to tho subject has thus been provided for
his students. As must always bo the case, the language of tho Middle Kingdom, which was the standard
of monumental hieroglyphic throughout Pharaonic times, forms the staple. Erman's Grammatik furnishes
the basis of its interpretation, but the arrangement of the matter is wholly M. Drioton's, whose work is
confessedly not a piece of original research although it shows a good mastery of the subject. In the early
pages here and thero are errors of reading of small importance which aro silently corrected in the later
pages, and the Index shows the author's final opinion with regard to each word.
It is to bo hoped that M. Drioton will produce a work on the same lines for general use but in a more
convenient dress. The stylographed writing is a sufficient guide for the audience in vivd voce teaching, but
it is pain and grief for independent reading. Apart from that, one may bo allowed to suggest that the
forms of the hieroglyphic signs should l>e more exactly reproduced. The practice of intelligent observance
and drawing of these signs is a necessary training aliko for the archaeologist and the student of the
language.
F . L L . GRIFFITH.
Thoth, the Hermes of Egypt: a study of some aspects of theological thought in Ancient Egypt. By PATRICK
BOYLAN (Oxford University Press, 1922). Pp. vii + 215.
The god Thoth, ibis and baboon, god of tho moon and of wisdom, is an excellent subject for a mono­
graph. Mr Boylan, who is Professor of Eastern Languages in University College, Dublin, has given us here
tho most elaborate study that has yet appeared in English of any single Egyptian divinity. Tho bulk of
Egyptian material utilised by him is enormous; on the other hand, the Hellenistic developments of Thoth-
Hormes and tho Hermetic literature aro outside the scopo of tho work. The material seems to bo brought
together chiefly from the texts with translations collected for the Berlin Dictionary, and the writings and
monographs of earlier scholars such as Pietschmann and Turaieff. The former source, which has been put
at the author's disposal, includes a vast amount that has not hitherto been made accessible. Chapter I
discusses (rather weakly it must be confessed) certain antiquated and impossible derivations of the name
of tho god from Egyptian. For this I may be permitted to quote from a review which appeared last May
in tho Literary Supplement of The Times. " There is no Egyptian root by which the name of Thoth can
be explained to tho satisfaction of philologists; like the names of several other deities, in all probability
'Thoth' is to be derived from a locality, district, or tribe named Tehut, where tho deity was worshipped,
tho parent-name being preserved to a very late date in that of the Tehut-nomc of Lower Egypt. Thus in
some extremely remote prehistoric period the name Tehuti (=Thoth) 'the god of Tehut' emerged as the
appellation of the god; and in turn, perhaps before tho age of Mencs, tho ibis-emblem of Thoth became the
symbol of the Tehut-nome."
Subsequent chapters deal very fully with tho different aspects and functions of the god, and catalogue
his epithets, his shrines, etc. There are. no illustrations, but hieroglyphic typo is freely used, the printing
having been done in Vienna.
As might be expected, there are statements in detail that stand in need of correction. For the benefit
of non-professional readers of this book, and they should bo many, I would point out two slips that may
be seriously misleading :
p. 25. No representations of the judgement scene havo boen found as early as tho Middle Kingdom,
pp. 132,168. Thoth-stm cannot moan " Thoth the hearer "; the spelling of the word stm is entirely against
it. Stm is really a late version of tho old title sm for a kind of priest.
There are some curious Teutonisms in the book : "fell together with " for "coincided with," and "the
dead" for "the*dead man." I t may be noted that students of mythology now have also at command
rietschmann and Boeder's long and closely packed article Thoth in Roscher's Lexikon der Gricchischen und
Rbmischen Mythologie (1920-1922).
F . L L . GRIFFITH.
Me'moires presentes a la Societe Archeologique d'Alexandrie, tome premier, (premier fascicule). Memoire stir
les anciennes branches du Nil. By PRINCE OMAR TOUSSOON. Cairo, 1922, pp. viii+60, with 13 plates.
The object of this memoir is to identify the mouths of the Nile mentioned by ancient writers, par­
ticularly Herodotus, Strabo and Ptolemy, from the indications now existing in the actual levels of the
Delta. Following the general principle that a branch of the river would naturally define itself by alluvial

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