"The first plate represents portion of a hieroglyphical text written on a roll of papyrus which was wrapped up with the mummy of the man whose virtues are recorded on it. As for the exact age and contents of the roll, it is beyond my capacity to say anything definite; but there is a delicacy in the drawing of the figures and in the formation of the letters which seem to indicate a considerable age, probably not less than twelve hundred years B.C. Each column of the writing has to be read from top to bottom, beginning with the first column on the left. It has been said in an earlier page that the hieratic and demotic scripts differed from the hieroglyphic in being written like Hebrew in long horizontal lines from right to left. The difference is, however, merely formal. If we turn the hieroglyphic page half round, so that the right side becomes the bottom, and the left side the top of the page, we can see the inscription run in hieratic fashion from right to left."
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