_Arabic Numerals_.--Your correspondent T.S.D.'s account of a supposed
date upon the Church of St. Brelade, Jersey, brings to my mind a
circumstance that once occurred to myself, which may, perhaps, be
amusing to date-hunters. Some years ago I visited a farm-house
in the north of England, whose owner had a taste for collecting
curiosities of all sorts. Not the least valuable of his collection
was a splendidly carved oak bedstead, which he considered of great
antiquity. Its date, plainly marked upon the panels at the bottom
of the front posts, was, he told me, 1111. On {359} examining this
astounding date a little closely, I soon perceived that the two middle
strokes had a slight curvature, a tendency to approach the shape of an
S, which distinguished them from the two exterior lines. The date was,
in fact, 1551; yet so small was the difference of the figures, that
the mistake was really a pardonable one.
Is your correspondent "E.V." acquainted with the _History of Castle
Acre Priory_, published some years ago? If my memory fails me not,
there is a date given in that work, as found inscribed on the plaster
of the Priory wall, much more ancient than 1445.
Has the derivation of the first four Arabic numerals, and probably
of the ninth, from the ancient Egyptian hieratic and enchorial
characters, for the ordinals corresponding with those numbers, ever
been noticed by writers upon the history of arithmetical notation?
The correspondence will be obvious to any one who refers to the table
given in the 4th vol. of Sir G. Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_ (3rd
edit.), p. 198.