"The ancient Egyptian word for the personal pronoun 'I' was _anuk_," said the Tracer placidly. "The phonetic for _a_ was the hieroglyph
Therefore this hieroglyphic inscription begins with the personal pronoun
"Now, the most ancient of Egyptian inscriptions read vertically in columns; there are only two columns in this papyrus, so we'll try it vertically and pass downward to the next symbol, which is inclosed in a sort of frame or cartouch. That immediately signifies that royalty is mentioned; therefore, we have already translated as much as 'I, the king (or queen).' Do you see?"
spells out the word '_Meris_,' in this way: M (pronounced _me_) is phonetically symbolized by the characters
This gives us Meris, the name of that deposed and fugitive king of Egypt who, after a last raid on the summer palace of Mer-Shen, usurping ruler of Egypt, was followed and tracked to Saïs, where, with an arrow through his back, he crawled to El Teb and finally died there of his wound. All this Egyptologists are perfectly familiar with in the translations of the boastful tablets and inscriptions erected near Saïs by Mer-Shen, the three hundred and twelfth sovereign after Queen Nitocris."
He looked up at Burke, smiling. "Therefore," he said, "this papyrus scroll was written by Meris, ex-king, a speculative thousands of years before Christ. And it begins: 'I, Meris the King.'"
"How does all this bear upon what concerns me?" demanded Burke.
Something in the quiet significance of the Tracer's brief command sent a curious thrill through the younger man. He leaned stiffly forward, studying the scroll, every faculty concentrated on the symbol which the Tracer had now touched with the carefully sharpened point of his pencil:
"That," said Mr. Keen, "is the ancient Egyptian word for 'little,' '_Ket_.' The next, below, written in two lines, is 'Samaris,' a proper name--the name of a woman. Under that, again, is the symbol for the number 18; the decimal sign,
Under that, again, is a hieroglyph of another sort, an ideograph representing a girl with a harp; and, beneath that, the symbol which always represented a dancing girl
and also the royal symbol inclosed in a cartouch,
which means literally 'the Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt.' Under that is the significant symbol