An illustration by George Cruikshank from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

"Restored to life," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

Ramses the Great as depicted in Sketches in Egypt by Charles Dama Gibson, 1899.  (The likeness is uncanny!)

"And we went forth," from Cleopatra by Henry Rider Haggard and illustrated by R. C. Woodville, 1889.

A howling dervish from The Land of the Sphinx by Georges Montbard, 1894.

From The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, 1888.

"I saw the world as it had been before man was," from Cleopatra by Henry Rider Haggard and illustrated by R. C. Woodville, 1889.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

To our knowlege, ours is the first depiction of the Eye of Horus as an acorn (and we'll allow the "why" of it to remain mysterious for now).

The quest to decode the individual letters in a name goes way, way back.  Our research triggered a realization that every name encodes an ancient Egypitan poem.  As the original publication of our findings is freshly out of print, and as it was originally intended exclusively for professional magicians and mentalists, we were inspired to offer a revised and expanded edition containing twice the number of example readings, so that anyone can perform the technique for friends.  No memory or guesswork is required.  You’ll understand the hidden Egyptian meaning of your name instantly, and you’ll be able to dramatically interpret friends’ names.  You don’t have to be a poet or expert on symbolism to shine with our technique.  You’ll simply say aloud what you secretly know the letters to mean.  Here are the details.

Here are two classic Egyptian symbols as letters (from Un Tour de Méditerranée, de Venise à Tunis, par Athènes, Constantinople et le Caire by Paul Jousset, 1893), but did you know we uncovered a way to decode Egyptian symbols in the letters of any name?  We share the discovery in the The Egyptian Secrets in Your Name. Our system includes an exclusive technique for automatically reciting an Egyptian poem as you gaze upon the letters of anyone's name (seriously), as if channeling a spirit from antiquity.  We only belatedly learned that our system was hailed as one of the top mentalism innovations of 2012 ... but you don't have to be a magician to use it, and it's actually not a trick.

Here are some vintage forensics from the Mirror yearbook of Bates College, 1921.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt quips, "Looks like 'scissors cuts paper' to me!  I see that the judge's ruling on that play was overturned."