The German priest Athanasius Kircher looked at a group of symbols and, without any evidence, decided that the hieroglyphs were instructions for secret ceremonies to gain the blessings of the god Osiris.
B
The Greek writer Horapollo said that the image of a rabbit in Egyptian hieroglyphs meant “open” because a rabbit’s eyes never close.
C
Young noticed that each time the demotic characters appeared, they were set off at both ends by lines like parentheses. He guessed that the lines were a simplified version of the oval cartouches that surrounded royal names in the hieroglyphs.