Vol. I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

His
ideophonetic
arrangement.
Arrangement
of the
proposed
Dictionary.
Polyphonous
symbols.
Natural
classification
of symbols.
The tabulated
symbols to
form the key.
XX Introduction.
M. Champollion, and of their application to the monuments of the
Egyptians." The dictionary does not claim even comparative
of such
perfection, " but it has been judged that the publication
a work might be of slight service to those who are desirous of
possessing, in a compendious form, the results of much labour,
comparison and instruction." The matter contained in the work
is not entirely original, but the arrangement is, and " if not
could at
scientific, [it is] perhaps the only one by which tyros
once find the particular group or word which they seek. It may
be termed ideophonetic, as it embraces both principles of ideal
and phonetic classification, and its arrangement has been borrowed
from a language very cognate in its construction the Chinese."
The hieroglyphical and English part of the Dictionary was
to be divided into two parts.
Part I was to contain words " com-
mencing with symbols, representatives of sounds, or phonetic,"
and Part II words " whose initial character is the equivalent of
an idea, or ideographic." Part I was to be " subdivided into
symbols, having the power of vowels or consonants, the vowels
forming (on account of one symbol frequently having
of many) one large class, and the consonants, according
the force
to their
position in the Coptic alphabet." That is to say, Division I of
Part I was to contain symbols or characters some of which Birch held
to be polyphonous, and Division II symbols to which he had given
consonantal values, and these were to be arranged in the order
of the letters of the Coptic Alphabet. The internal classification
of the characters or symbols was to be strictly ideographical,
"
taking the symbols in their arrangement, according to the
rank they hold in natural and other sciences, as the human form,
limbs, animals, inanimate objects, etc." At the end of the
Dictionary Birch intended to give "all the symbols
in a similar
classification, and in a tabular view," and this section was to
form the key to the whole work. With the view of illustrating
the way in which he intended his Dictionary to be used, he says,
" Suppose, for example, it were required to find the meaning
of a group beginning with a human eye [-] as the eye is a
component part of the human body,
it will be found in that
division in the table, and there will be affixed to the depicted eye,
v[ide Nos] 13-43." In this group of words will be found all those
words in which an eye [