antiquity, mystical characters, or symbols, in use among the Egyptians, and that as well in their writings as inscriptions; being the figures of various animals, the parts of human bodies, and mechanical instruments. The word is composed of the Greek ἱερός, "sacer," "holy," and γραφή, "to engrave;" it being the custom to have the walls, doors, &c. of their temples, obelisks, &c. engraved with such figures.

Hieroglyphics are properly emblems or signs of divine, sacred, or supernatural things; by which they are distinguished from common symbols, which are signs of sensible and natural things.

Hermes Trismegistus is commonly esteemed the inventor of hieroglyphics: he first introduced them into the heathen theology, from whence they have been transplanted into the Jewish and Christian.

Sacred things, says Hippocrates, should only be communicated to sacred persons. Hence it was that the ancient Egyptians communicated to none but their kings and priests, and those who were to succeed to the priesthood and the crown, the secrets of nature, and the secrets of their morality and history; and this they did by a kind of cabbala, which, at the same time that it instructed them, only amused the rest of the people. Hence the use of hieroglyphics, or mystic figures, to veil their morality, politics, &c. from profane eyes. This author, it may be observed, and many others, do not keep to the precise character of a hieroglyphic, but apply it to profane as well as divine things.

Hieroglyphics are a kind of real characters, which do not only denote, but in some measure express, the things. Thus, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom. v. a lion is the hieroglyphic of strength and fortitude; a bullock, of agriculture; a horse, of Hieroglyphic liberty; a sphinx, of subtilty, &c.

Such is the opinion that has generally been embraced, both by ancient and modern writers, of the origin and use of hieroglyphics. It has been almost uniformly maintained, that they were invented by the Egyptian priests in order to conceal their wisdom from the knowledge of the vulgar; but the late bishop Warburton hath, with much ingenuity and learning, endeavoured to show that this account is erroneous.

According to this writer, the first kind of hieroglyphics were mere pictures, because the most natural way of communicating our conceptions by marks or figures was by tracing out the images of things; and this is actually verified in the case of the Mexicans, whose only method of writing their laws and history was by this picture-writing. But the hieroglyphics invented by the Egyptians were an improvement on this rude and inconvenient essay towards writing, for they contrived to make them both pictures and characters. In order to effect this improvement, they were obliged to proceed gradually, by first making the principal circumstance of the subject stand for the whole; as in the hieroglyphics of Horapollo, which represent a battle of two armies in array by two hands, one holding a shield and the other a bow: then putting the instrument of the thing, whether real or metaphorical, for the thing itself, as an eye and sceptre to represent a monarch, a ship and pilot the governor of the universe, &c.: and finally, by making one thing stand for or represent another, where their observations of nature or traditional superstitions led them to discover or imagine any resemblance: thus, the universe was designed by a serpent in a circle, whose variegated spots denoted the stars; and a man who had nobly surmounted his misfortune was represented by the skin of the hyena, because this was supposed to furnish an invulnerable defence in battle.

The Chinese writing, he observes, was the next kind of improvement in the use of hieroglyphics. The Egyptians joined characteristic marks to images; the Chinese threw out the images and retained only the contracted marks, and from these marks proceeded letters. The general concurrence of different people in this method of recording their thoughts can never be supposed to be the effect of imitation, sinister views, or chance; but must be considered as the uniform voice of nature speaking to the rude conceptions of mankind: for not only the Chinese of the East, the Mexicans of the West, and the Egyptians of the South, but the Scythians likewise of the North, and the intermediate inhabitants of the earth, viz. the Indians, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, &c. used the same way of writing by picture and hieroglyphic.

The bishop farther shows, that the several species of hieroglyphic writing took their rise from nature and necessity, and not from choice and artifice, by tracing at large the origin and progress of the art of speech. He proceeds to show how in process of time the Egyptian hieroglyphics came to be employed for the vehicle of mystery. They used their hieroglyphics two ways; the one more simple, by putting the part for the whole, which was the etiologic hieroglyphic; and the other more artificial, by putting one thing of resembling qualities for another, called the topical hieroglyphic: thus Hieroglyphics.

Thus the moon was sometimes represented by a half circle and sometimes by a cynocephalus. They employed their proper hieroglyphics to record openly and plainly their laws, policies, public morals, and history, and all kinds of civil matters; this is evident from their obelisks, which were full of hieroglyphic characters, designed to record singular events, memorable actions, and new inventions; and also from the celebrated inscription on the temple of Minerva at Sais, where an infant, an old man, a hawk, a fish, and a river-horse, expressed this moral sentence: "All you who come into the world and go out of it, know this, that the gods hate impudence." However, the tropical hieroglyphics, which were employed to divulge, gradually produced symbols which were designed to secrete or conceal: thus Egypt was sometimes expressed by the crocodile, sometimes by a burning censer with a heart upon it; where the simplicity of the first representation and the abstruseness of the latter show, that the one was a tropical hieroglyphic for communication, and the other a tropical symbol invented for secrecy.

Enigmatic symbols were afterwards formed by the assemblage of different things, or of their properties that were less known; and though they might have been intelligible at first, yet when the art of writing was invented, hieroglyphics were more generally diffused, the people forgot the signification of them, and the priests, retaining and cultivating the knowledge of them because they were the repositories of their learning and history, at length applied them to the purpose of preserving the secrets of their religion.

Symbols were the true original of animal worship in Egypt, as Sir John Marsham conjectured, Can. Chron. p. 58, because in these hieroglyphics was recorded the history of their greater deities, their kings, and lawgivers, represented by animals and other creatures. The symbol of each god was well known and familiar to his worshippers, by means of the popular paintings and engravings on their temples and other sacred monuments; so that the symbol presenting the idea of the god, and that idea exciting sentiments of religion, it was natural for them, in their addresses to any particular god, to turn to his representative mark or symbol; especially when we consider farther, that the Egyptian priests feigned a divine original for hieroglyphic characters, in order to increase the veneration of the people for them. These would of course bring on a relative devotion to these symbolic figures, which, when it came to be paid to the living animal, would soon terminate in an ultimate worship.

Another consequence of the sacredness of the hieroglyphic characters was, that it disposed the more superstitious to engrave them on gems, and wear them as amulets or charms. This magical abuse seems not to have been much earlier than the established worship of the god Serapis, which happened under the Ptolemies, and was first brought to the general knowledge of the world by certain Christian heretics and natives of Egypt, who had mixed a number of Pagan superstitions with their Christianity. These gems, called abraxas, are frequently to be met with in the cabinets of the curious, and are engraved with all kinds of hieroglyphic characters. To these abraxas succeed the talismans.

Vol. VIII. Part II.

Hierogrammatists, (Hierogrammatei), i.e. holy registers, were an order of priests among the ancient Egyptians, who presided over learning and religion. They had the care of the hieroglyphics, and were the expounders of religious doctrines and opinions. They were looked upon as a kind of prophets; and it is pretended, that one of them predicted to an Egyptian king, that an Israelite (meaning Moses), eminent for his qualifications and achievements, would lessen and depress the Egyptian monarchy.—The hierogrammatei were always near the king, to assist him with their informations and counsels. The better to fit them for this, they made use of the skill and knowledge they had acquired in the stars and the motions of the heavenly lights, and even of the writings of their predecessors, wherein their functions and duties were delivered. They were exempted from all civil employments, were reputed the first persons in dignity next the king, and bore a kind of sceptre in form of a ploughshare.—After Egypt became a province of the Roman empire, the hierogrammatei sunk into neglect.