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Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal
writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable fo ...
used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the
Egyptian language The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian ( ) is a dead Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts which were made accessible to the modern world following the deciphe ...
. Hieroglyphs combined
logograph In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, '' kanji'' in Japanese, '' hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, ...
ic,
syllabic Syllabic may refer to: *Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words **Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable *Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables *Abugida, writing system ...
and
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
ic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,000 graphemes in the Old Kingdom period, reduced to around 750 to 850 in the
classical language A classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large and ancient body of written literature. Classical languages are typically dead languages, or show a high degree of diglossia, as the spoken varieties of th ...
of the Middle Kingdom, but inflated to the order of some 5,000 signs in the Ptolemaic period. Antonio Loprieno, ''Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction'' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 12.
Cursive hieroglyphs were used for
religious literature {{Commons Literature by genre Literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent ...
on
papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to ...
and wood. The later
hieratic Hieratic (; grc, ἱερατικά, hieratiká, priestly) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BC until the ris ...
and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the
Proto-Sinaitic script Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian ...
that later evolved into the
Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician al ...
. Through the Phoenician alphabet's major child systems (the
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
and
Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...
scripts), the Egyptian hieroglyphic script is ancestral to the majority of scripts in modern use, most prominently the
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
and
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...
s (through Greek) and the
Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and th ...
, and possibly the Brahmic family of scripts (through Aramaic, Phoenician, and Greek). The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the
Early Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
, around the 32nd century BC (
Naqada III Naqada III is the last phase of the Naqada culture of ancient Egyptian prehistory, dating from approximately 3200 to 3000 BC. It is the period during which the process of state formation, which began in Naqada II, became highly visible, w ...
), with the first decipherable sentence written in the
Egyptian language The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian ( ) is a dead Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts which were made accessible to the modern world following the deciphe ...
dating to the Second Dynasty (28th century BC). Egyptian hieroglyphs developed into a mature writing system used for monumental inscription in the
classical language A classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large and ancient body of written literature. Classical languages are typically dead languages, or show a high degree of diglossia, as the spoken varieties of th ...
of the Middle Kingdom period; during this period, the system made use of about 900 distinct signs. The use of this writing system continued through the
New Kingdom New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...
and Late Period, and on into the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the
Roman period The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...
, extending into the 4th century AD. With the final closing of pagan temples in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost. Although attempts were made, the script remained undeciphered throughout the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
and the early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphic writing was finally accomplished in the 1820s by
Jean-François Champollion Jean-François Champollion (), also known as Champollion ''le jeune'' ('the Younger'; 23 December 17904 March 1832), was a French philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in t ...
, with the help of the
Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Anci ...
.


Etymology

The word ''hieroglyph'' comes from the
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
adjective (''hieroglyphikos''), a compound of ( 'sacred') and γλύφω (''glýphō'' '(Ι) carve, engrave'; see ''
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
'') meaning sacred carving. The glyphs themselves, since the Ptolemaic period, were called (''tà hieroglyphikà rámmata') "the sacred engraved letters", the Greek counterpart to the Egyptian expression of ''mdw.w-nṯr'' "god's words".Antonio Loprieno, ''Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction'' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 11. Greek meant "a carver of hieroglyphs". In English, ''hieroglyph'' as a noun is recorded from 1590, originally short for nominalized ''hieroglyphic'' (1580s, with a plural ''hieroglyphics''), from adjectival use (''hieroglyphic character''). The Nag Hammadi texts written in Sahidic Coptic call the hieroglyphs "writings of the magicians, soothsayers" ().


History and evolution


Origin

Hieroglyph A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatoni ...
s may have emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on
Gerzean The Gerzeh culture, also called Naqada II, refers to the archaeological stage at Gerzeh (also Girza or Jirzah), a prehistoric Egyptian cemetery located along the west bank of the Nile. The necropolis is named after el-Girzeh, the nearby contem ...
pottery from c. 4000 BC have been argued to resemble hieroglyphic writing. Proto-hieroglyphic symbol systems developed in the second half of the 4th millennium BC, such as the clay labels of a
Predynastic Prehistoric Egypt and Predynastic Egypt span the period from the earliest human settlement to the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period around 3100 BC, starting with the first Pharaoh, Narmer for some Egyptologists, Hor-Aha for others, with th ...
ruler called " Scorpion I" ( Naqada IIIA period, c. 33rd century BC) recovered at
Abydos Abydos may refer to: *Abydos, a progressive metal side project of German singer Andy Kuntz *Abydos (Hellespont), an ancient city in Mysia, Asia Minor * Abydos (''Stargate''), name of a fictional planet in the ''Stargate'' science fiction universe ...
(modern
Umm el-Qa'ab Umm El Qaʻāb (sometimes romanised Umm El Gaʻab, ar, أم القعاب) is a necropolis of the Early Dynastic Period kings at Abydos, Egypt. Its modern name means "Mother of Pots" as the whole area is littered with the broken pot shards of o ...
) in 1998 or the
Narmer Palette The Narmer Palette, also known as the Great Hierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, is a significant Egyptian archeological find, dating from about the 31st century BC, belonging, at least nominally, to the category of cosmetic palettes. ...
(c. 31st century BC). The first full sentence written in mature hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa'ab, which dates from the Second Dynasty (28th or 27th century BC). Around 800 hieroglyphs are known to date back to the
Old Kingdom In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning c. 2700–2200 BC. It is also known as the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the great pyramid-builders of the Fourth ...
, Middle Kingdom and
New Kingdom New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...
Eras. By the
Greco-Roman The Greco-Roman civilization (; also Greco-Roman culture; spelled Graeco-Roman in the Commonwealth), as understood by modern scholars and writers, includes the geographical regions and countries that culturally—and so historically—were di ...
period, there were more than 5,000. Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably, ereinvented under the influence of the latter", and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian
Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
". There are many instances of early Egypt-Mesopotamia relations, but given the lack of direct evidence for the transfer of writing, "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt". Others have held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy” and that “a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt..." Since the 1990s, the above-mentioned discoveries of glyphs at
Abydos Abydos may refer to: *Abydos, a progressive metal side project of German singer Andy Kuntz *Abydos (Hellespont), an ancient city in Mysia, Asia Minor * Abydos (''Stargate''), name of a fictional planet in the ''Stargate'' science fiction universe ...
, dated to between 3400 and 3200 BCE, have shed doubt on the classical notion that the Mesopotamian symbol system predates the Egyptian one. However, Egyptian writing appeared suddenly at that time, while Mesopotamia had a long evolutionary history of the usage of signs - for agricultural and acounting purposes- in tokens dating as early back to circa 8000 BC."The seal impressions, from various tombs, date even further back, to 3400 B.C. These dates challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia." Rosalie David stated that "If Egypt did adopt the idea of writing from elsewhere, it was presumably only the concept which was taken over, since the forms of the hieroglyphs are entirely Egyptian in origin and reflect the distinctive flora, fauna and images of Egypt's own landscape." File:Labels from the tomb of Menes.jpg, Labels with early inscriptions from the tomb of
Menes Menes (fl. c. 3200–3000 BC; ; egy, mnj, probably pronounced *; grc, Μήνης) was a pharaoh of the Early Dynastic Period of ancient Egypt credited by classical tradition with having united Upper and Lower Egypt and as the founder of the ...
(3200–3000 BCE) File:Ebony plaque of Menes in his tomb of Abydos (photograph).jpg, Ivory plaque of Menes (3200–3000 BCE) File:Ebony plaque of Menes in his tomb of Abydos (drawing).jpg, Ivory plaque of Menes (drawing) File:Peribsen.JPG, The oldest known full sentence written in mature hieroglyphs. Seal impression of Seth-Peribsen ( Second Dynasty, c. 28–27th century BCE)


Mature writing system

Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that function like an
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
;
logograph In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, '' kanji'' in Japanese, '' hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, ...
s, representing
morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...
s; and
determinative A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...
s, which narrow down the meaning of logographic or phonetic words.


Late Period

As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the
hieratic Hieratic (; grc, ἱερατικά, hieratiká, priestly) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BC until the ris ...
(priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on
papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to ...
. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The
Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Anci ...
contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek.


Late survival

Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE), and after
Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...
's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Ptolemaic and
Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...
periods. It appears that the misleading quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part, as a response to the changed political situation. Some believed that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true
Egyptians Egyptians ( arz, المَصرِيُون, translit=al-Maṣriyyūn, ; arz, المَصرِيِين, translit=al-Maṣriyyīn, ; cop, ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, remenkhēmi) are an ethnic group native to the Nile, Nile Valley in Egypt. Egyptian ...
' from some of the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally. Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge. By the 4th century AD, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the "myth of allegorical hieroglyphs" was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in 391 by the Roman Emperor
Theodosius I Theodosius I ( grc-gre, Θεοδόσιος ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also called Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. During his reign, he succeeded in a crucial war against the Goths, as well as in two ...
; the last known inscription is from
Philae ; ar, فيلة; cop, ⲡⲓⲗⲁⲕ , alternate_name = , image = File:File, Asuán, Egipto, 2022-04-01, DD 93.jpg , alt = , caption = The temple of Isis from Philae at its current location on Agilkia Island in Lake Nasse ...
, known as the
Graffito of Esmet-Akhom The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, also known by its designation Philae 436 or GPH 436, is the last known inscription written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, carved on 24 August AD 394. The inscription, carved in the temple of Philae in southern Egypt, was cr ...
, from 394. The ''Hieroglyphica'' of Horapollo (c. 5th century) appears to retain some genuine knowledge about the writing system. It offers an explanation of close to 200 signs. Some are identified correctly, such as the "goose" hieroglyph (''zꜣ'') representing the word for "son". A half-dozen Demotic glyphs are still in use, added to the Greek alphabet when writing Coptic.


Decipherment

Knowledge of the hieroglyphs had been lost completely in the medieval period. Early attempts at decipherment are due to Dhul-Nun al-Misri and
Ibn Wahshiyya ( ar, ابن وحشية), died , was a Nabataean (Aramaic-speaking, rural Iraqi) agriculturalist, toxicologist, and alchemist born in Qussīn, near Kufa in Iraq. He is the author of the '' Nabataean Agriculture'' (), an influential Arabic work ...
(9th and 10th century, respectively). All medieval and early modern attempts were hampered by the fundamental assumption that hieroglyphs recorded ideas and not the sounds of the language. As no bilingual texts were available, any such symbolic 'translation' could be proposed without the possibility of verification. It was not until
Athanasius Kircher Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works, most notably in the fields of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fe ...
in the mid 17th century that scholars began to think the hieroglyphs might also represent sounds. Kircher was familiar with Coptic, and thought that it might be the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs, but was held back by a belief in the mystical nature of the symbols. The breakthrough in decipherment came only with the discovery of the
Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Anci ...
by
Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader wh ...
's troops in 1799 (during Napoleon's Egyptian invasion). As the stone presented a hieroglyphic and a demotic version of the same text in parallel with a Greek translation, plenty of material for falsifiable studies in translation was suddenly available. In the early 19th century, scholars such as Silvestre de Sacy,
Johan David Åkerblad Johan David Åkerblad (6 May 1763, Stockholm – 7 February 1819, Rome) was a Swedish diplomat and orientalist. Career In 1778 he began his studies of classical and oriental languages at the University of Uppsala. In 1782 he defended his gr ...
, and Thomas Young studied the inscriptions on the stone, and were able to make some headway. Finally,
Jean-François Champollion Jean-François Champollion (), also known as Champollion ''le jeune'' ('the Younger'; 23 December 17904 March 1832), was a French philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in t ...
made the complete decipherment by the 1820s. In his '' Lettre à M. Dacier'' (1822), he wrote:
It is a complex system, writing figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once, in the same text, the same phrase, I would almost say in the same word.


Writing system

Visually, hieroglyphs are all more or less figurative: they represent real or abstract elements, sometimes stylized and simplified, but all generally perfectly recognizable in form. However, the same sign can, according to context, be interpreted in diverse ways: as a phonogram (
phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
reading), as a
logogram In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, ...
, or as an
ideogram An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by famili ...
( semagram; "
determinative A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...
") (
semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
reading). The determinative was not read as a phonetic constituent, but facilitated understanding by differentiating the word from its homophones.


Phonetic reading

Most non-
determinative A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...
hieroglyphic signs are ''phonograms'', whose meaning is determined by pronunciation, independent of visual characteristics. This follows the
rebus A rebus () is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases. For example: the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+ ...
principle where, for example, the picture of an eye could stand not only for the English word ''eye'', but also for its phonetic equivalent, the first person pronoun ''I''. Phonograms formed with one consonant are called '' uniliteral'' signs; with two consonants, '' biliteral'' signs; with three, ''
triliteral The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowels ...
'' signs. Twenty-four uniliteral signs make up the so-called hieroglyphic alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing does not normally indicate vowels, unlike
cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge- ...
, and for that reason has been labelled by some as an ''
abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vow ...
'', i.e., an alphabet without vowels. Thus, hieroglyphic writing representing a pintail duck is read in Egyptian as ''sꜣ'', derived from the main consonants of the Egyptian word for this duck: 's', 'ꜣ' and 't'. (Note that ꜣ or , two half-rings opening to the left, sometimes replaced by the digit '3', is the Egyptian ''
alef Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These lett ...
.'') It is also possible to use the hieroglyph of the pintail duck without a link to its meaning in order to represent the two
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s ''s'' and ''ꜣ'', independently of any vowels that could accompany these consonants, and in this way write the word: ''sꜣ'', "son"; or when complemented by other signs detailed below ''sꜣ'', "keep, watch"; and ''sꜣṯ.w'', "hard ground". For example: G38the characters ''sꜣ''; G38-Z1sthe same character used only in order to signify, according to the context, "pintail duck" or, with the appropriate determinative, "son", two words having the same or similar consonants; the meaning of the little vertical stroke will be explained further on under Logograms: z:G38-A-A47-D54the character ''sꜣ'' as used in the word ''sꜣw'', "keep, watch" As in the
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
script, not all vowels were written in Egyptian hieroglyphs; it is debatable whether vowels were written at all. Possibly, as with Arabic, the semivowels and (as in English W and Y) could double as the vowels and . In modern transcriptions, an ''e'' is added between consonants to aid in their pronunciation. For example, ''nfr'' "good" is typically written ''nefer''. This does not reflect Egyptian vowels, which are obscure, but is merely a modern convention. Likewise, the ''ꜣ'' and ʾ are commonly transliterated as ''a'', as in Ra. Hieroglyphs are inscribed in rows of pictures arranged in horizontal lines or vertical columns.Sir Alan H. Gardiner, ''Egyptian Grammar'', Third Edition Revised,
Griffith Institute The Griffith Institute is an Egyptological institution based in the Griffith Wing of the Sackler Library and is part of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, England. It was founded for the advancement of Egyptology and Ancient N ...
(2005), p. 25.
Both hieroglyph lines as well as signs contained in the lines are read with upper content having precedence over content below. The lines or columns, and the individual inscriptions within them, read from left to right in rare instances only and for particular reasons at that; ordinarily however, they read from right to left–the Egyptians' preferred direction of writing (although, for convenience, modern texts are often normalized into left-to-right order). The direction toward which asymmetrical hieroglyphs face indicate their proper reading order. For example, when human and animal hieroglyphs face or look toward the left, they almost always must be read from left to right, and vice versa. As in many ancient writing systems, words are not separated by blanks or punctuation marks. However, certain hieroglyphs appear particularly common only at the end of words, making it possible to readily distinguish words.


Uniliteral signs

The Egyptian hieroglyphic script contained 24 uniliterals (symbols that stood for single consonants, much like letters in English). It would have been possible to write all Egyptian words in the manner of these signs, but the Egyptians never did so and never simplified their complex writing into a true alphabet. Each uniliteral glyph once had a unique reading, but several of these fell together as
Old Egyptian The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian ( ) is a dead Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts which were made accessible to the modern world following the deciphe ...
developed into
Middle Egyptian The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian ( ) is a dead Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts which were made accessible to the modern world following the deciphe ...
. For example, the folded-cloth glyph (𓋴) seems to have been originally an /s/ and the door-bolt glyph (𓊃) a /θ/ sound, but these both came to be pronounced , as the sound was lost. A few uniliterals first appear in Middle Egyptian texts. Besides the uniliteral glyphs, there are also the biliteral and
triliteral The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowels ...
signs, to represent a specific sequence of two or three consonants, consonants and vowels, and a few as vowel combinations only, in the language.


Phonetic complements

Egyptian writing is often redundant: in fact, it happens very frequently that a word is followed by several characters writing the same sounds, in order to guide the reader. For example, the word ''nfr'', "beautiful, good, perfect", was written with a unique triliteral that was read as ''nfr'': ::nfr However, it is considerably more common to add to that triliteral, the uniliterals for ''f'' and ''r''. The word can thus be written as ''nfr+f+r'', but one still reads it as merely ''nfr''. The two alphabetic characters are adding clarity to the spelling of the preceding triliteral hieroglyph. Redundant characters accompanying biliteral or triliteral signs are called '' phonetic complements'' (or complementaries). They can be placed in front of the sign (rarely), after the sign (as a general rule), or even framing it (appearing both before and after). Ancient Egyptian scribes consistently avoided leaving large areas of blank space in their writing and might add additional phonetic complements or sometimes even invert the order of signs if this would result in a more aesthetically pleasing appearance (good scribes attended to the artistic, and even religious, aspects of the hieroglyphs, and would not simply view them as a communication tool). Various examples of the use of phonetic complements can be seen below:
: S43-d-w – ''md +d +w'' (the complementary ''d'' is placed after the sign) → it reads ''mdw'', meaning "tongue". : x:p-xpr:r-i-A40 – ''ḫ +p +ḫpr +r +j'' (the four complementaries frame the triliteral sign of the scarab beetle) → it reads ''ḫpr.j'', meaning the name "
Khepri Khepri ( Egyptian: ''ḫprj,'' also transliterated Khepera, Kheper, Khepra, Chepri) is a scarab-faced god in ancient Egyptian religion who represents the rising or morning sun. By extension, he can also represent creation and the renewal of li ...
", with the final glyph being the determinative for 'ruler or god'.
Notably, phonetic complements were also used to allow the reader to differentiate between signs that are
homophones A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (pa ...
, or which do not always have a unique reading. For example, the symbol of "the seat" (or chair):
: Q1 – This can be read ''st'', ''ws'' and ''ḥtm'', according to the word in which it is found. The presence of phonetic complements—and of the suitable determinative—allows the reader to know which of the three readings to choose: :*1st Reading: st – Q1-t:pr – ''st'', written ''st+t''; the last character is the determinative of "the house" or that which is found there, meaning "seat, throne, place"; ::: Q1-t:H8 – ''st'' (written ''st+t''; the "egg" determinative is used for female personal names in some periods), meaning "
Isis Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...
"; :*2nd Reading: ws – Q1:ir-A40 – ''wsjr'' (written ''ws''+''jr'', with, as a phonetic complement, "the eye", which is read ''jr'', following the determinative of "god"), meaning "
Osiris Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wsjr'', cop, ⲟⲩⲥⲓⲣⲉ , ; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎𐤓, romanized: ʾsr) is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He wa ...
"; :*3rd Reading: ḥtm – H-Q1-m:t-E17 – ''ḥtm.t'' (written ''ḥ+ḥtm+m+t'', with the determinative of "Anubis" or "the jackal"), meaning a kind of wild animal; ::: H-Q1-t-G41 – ''ḥtm'' (written ''ḥ +ḥtm +t'', with the determinative of the flying bird), meaning "to disappear".
Finally, it sometimes happens that the pronunciation of words might be changed because of their connection to Ancient Egyptian: in this case, it is not rare for writing to adopt a compromise in notation, the two readings being indicated jointly. For example, the adjective ''bnj'', "sweet", became ''bnr''. In Middle Egyptian, one can write: ::: b-n:r-i-M30 – ''bnrj'' (written ''b+n+r+i'', with determinative) which is fully read as ''bnr'', the ''j'' not being pronounced but retained in order to keep a written connection with the ancient word (in the same fashion as the
English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
words ''through'', ''knife'', or ''victuals'', which are no longer pronounced the way they are written.)


Semantic reading

Besides a phonetic interpretation, characters can also be read for their meaning: in this instance,
logogram In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, ...
s are being spoken (or
ideogram An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by famili ...
s) and ''semagrams'' (the latter are also called determinatives).Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian, A Linguistic Introduction,
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pr ...
(1995), p. 13


Logograms

A hieroglyph used as a
logogram In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, ...
defines the object of which it is an image. Logograms are therefore the most frequently used common nouns; they are always accompanied by a mute vertical stroke indicating their status as a logogram (the usage of a vertical stroke is further explained below); in theory, all hieroglyphs would have the ability to be used as logograms. Logograms can be accompanied by phonetic complements. Here are some examples: :*ra:Z1 – ''rꜥ'', meaning "sun"; :*pr:Z1 – ''pr'', meaning "house"; :*sw-t:Z1 – ''swt'' (''sw''+''t''), meaning "reed"; :*Dw:Z1 – ''ḏw'', meaning "mountain". In some cases, the semantic connection is indirect ( metonymic or
metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
ic): :*nTr-Z1 – ''nṯr'', meaning "god"; the character in fact represents a temple flag (standard); :*G53-Z1 – ''bꜣ'', meaning " " (soul); the character is the traditional representation of a "bâ" (a bird with a human head); :*G27-Z1 – ''dšr'', meaning "flamingo"; the corresponding phonogram means "red" and the bird is associated by
metonymy Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept. Etymology The words ''metonymy'' and ''metonym'' come from grc, μετωνυμία, 'a change of name ...
with this color.


Determinatives

Determinative A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...
s or semagrams (semantic symbols specifying meaning) are placed at the end of a word. These mute characters serve to clarify what the word is about, as
homophonic In music, homophony (;, Greek: ὁμόφωνος, ''homóphōnos'', from ὁμός, ''homós'', "same" and φωνή, ''phōnē'', "sound, tone") is a texture in which a primary part is supported by one or more additional strands that flesh ...
glyphs are common. If a similar procedure existed in English, words with the same spelling would be followed by an indicator that would not be read, but which would fine-tune the meaning: "retort hemistry and "retort hetoric would thus be distinguished.
A number of determinatives exist: divinities, humans, parts of the human body, animals, plants, etc. Certain determinatives possess a literal and a figurative meaning. For example, a roll of papyrus, Y1   is used to define "books" but also abstract ideas. The determinative of the
plural The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...
is a shortcut to signal three occurrences of the word, that is to say, its plural (since the Egyptian language had a dual, sometimes indicated by two strokes). This special character is explained below.
Here, are several examples of the use of determinatives borrowed from the book, ''Je lis les hiéroglyphes'' ("I am reading hieroglyphs") by Jean Capart, which illustrate their importance: nfr-w-A17-Z3 – ''nfrw'' (''w'' and the three strokes are the marks of the plural): iterally"the beautiful young people", that is to say, the young military recruits. The word has a young-person determinative symbol: A17 – which is the determinative indicating babies and children; nfr-:f:r:t-B1 – ''nfr.t'' (''.t'' is here the suffix that forms the feminine): meaning "the nubile young woman", with B1 as the determinative indicating a woman; nfr-nfr-nfr-pr – ''nfrw'' (the tripling of the character serving to express the plural, flexional ending ''w'') : meaning "foundations (of a house)", with the house as a determinative, pr; nfr-f:r-S28 – ''nfr'' : meaning "clothing" with S28   as the determinative for lengths of cloth; nfr-W22:Z2ss – ''nfr'' : meaning "wine" or "beer"; with a jug W22   as the determinative. All these words have a meliorative connotation: "good, beautiful, perfect". The ''Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian'' by Raymond A. Faulkner, gives some twenty words that are read ''nfr'' or which are formed from this word.


Additional signs


Cartouche

Rarely, the names of gods are placed within a
cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the f ...
; the two last names of the sitting king are always placed within a cartouche: < N5:Z1-i-Y5:n-A40 > jmn-rꜥ, "Amon-Ra"; < q:E23-i-V4-p:d:r-A-t:H8 > qljwꜣpdrꜣ.t, "Cleopatra";


Filling stroke

A filling stroke is a character indicating the end of a quadrat that would otherwise be incomplete.


Signs joined together

Some signs are the contraction of several others. These signs have, however, a function and existence of their own: for example, a forearm where the hand holds a scepter is used as a determinative for words meaning "to direct, to drive" and their derivatives.


Doubling

The doubling of a sign indicates its dual; the tripling of a sign indicates its plural.


Grammatical signs

*The vertical stroke indicates that the sign is a logogram. *Two strokes indicate the dual number, and the three strokes the plural. *The direct notation of flexional endings, for example: W


Spelling

Standard
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
—"correct" spelling—in Egyptian is much looser than in modern languages. In fact, one or several variants exist for almost every word. One finds: *Redundancies; *Omission of
graphemes In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphem ...
, which are ignored whether or not they are intentional; *Substitutions of one grapheme for another, such that it is impossible to distinguish a "mistake" from an "alternate spelling"; *Errors of omission in the drawing of signs, which are much more problematic when the writing is cursive (hieratic) writing, but especially demotic, where the schematization of the signs is extreme. However, many of these apparent spelling errors constitute an issue of chronology. Spelling and standards varied over time, so the writing of a word during the
Old Kingdom In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning c. 2700–2200 BC. It is also known as the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the great pyramid-builders of the Fourth ...
might be considerably different during the
New Kingdom New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...
. Furthermore, the Egyptians were perfectly content to include older orthography ("historical spelling") alongside newer practices, as though it were acceptable in English to use archaic spellings in modern texts. Most often, ancient "spelling errors" are simply misinterpretations of context. Today, hieroglyphicists use numerous cataloguing systems (notably the '' Manuel de Codage'' and ''
Gardiner's Sign List Gardiner's Sign List is a list of common Egyptian hieroglyphs compiled by Sir Alan Gardiner. It is considered a standard reference in the study of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Gardiner lists only the common forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but h ...
'') to clarify the presence of determinatives, ideograms, and other ambiguous signs in transliteration.


Simple examples

The glyphs in this
cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the f ...
are transliterated as: though ''ii'' is considered a single letter and transliterated ''y''. Another way in which hieroglyphs work is illustrated by the two Egyptian words pronounced ''pr'' (usually vocalised as ''per''). One word is 'house', and its hieroglyphic representation is straightforward: pr:Z1 Here, the 'house' hieroglyph works as a logogram: it represents the word with a single sign. The vertical stroke below the hieroglyph is a common way of indicating that a glyph is working as a logogram. Another word ''pr'' is the verb 'to go out, leave'. When this word is written, the 'house' hieroglyph is used as a phonetic symbol: pr:r-D54 Here, the 'house' glyph stands for the consonants ''pr''. The 'mouth' glyph below it is a ''phonetic complement:'' it is read as ''r'', reinforcing the phonetic reading of ''pr''. The third hieroglyph is a ''determinative'': it is an
ideogram An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by famili ...
for verbs of motion that gives the reader an idea of the meaning of the word.


Encoding and font support

Egyptian hieroglyphs were added to the
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2 which introduced the
Egyptian Hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1, ...
block (U+13000–U+1342F). , four fonts, ''Aegyptus'', ''NewGardiner'', ''
Noto Noto ( scn, Notu; la, Netum) is a city and in the Province of Syracuse, Sicily, Italy. It is southwest of the city of Syracuse at the foot of the Iblean Mountains. It lends its name to the surrounding area Val di Noto. In 2002 Noto and i ...
Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs'' and ''JSeshFont'' support this range. Another font, ''
Segoe UI Historic Segoe ( ) is a typeface, or family of fonts, that is best known for its use by Microsoft. The company uses Segoe in its online and printed marketing materials, including recent logos for a number of products. Additionally, the Segoe UI font su ...
'', comes bundled with Windows 10 and also contains glyphs for the Egyptian Hieroglyphs block. Segoe UI Historic excludes three glyphs depicting
phallus A phallus is a penis (especially when erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic. Any object that symbolically—or, more precise ...
( Gardiner's D52, D52A D53, Unicode code points U+130B8–U+130BA).


See also

*
List of Egyptian hieroglyphs The total number of distinct Egyptian hieroglyphs increased over time from several hundred in the Middle Kingdom to several thousand during the Ptolemaic Kingdom. In 1928/1929 Alan Gardiner published an overview of hieroglyphs, Gardiner's sign ...
**
Gardiner's sign list Gardiner's Sign List is a list of common Egyptian hieroglyphs compiled by Sir Alan Gardiner. It is considered a standard reference in the study of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Gardiner lists only the common forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but h ...
** Egyptian numerals *
Egyptian language The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian ( ) is a dead Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts which were made accessible to the modern world following the deciphe ...
*
Middle Bronze Age alphabets Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian ...
* Manuel de Codage *
Champollion Museum The Champollion Museum (french: Musée Champollion) is located in Figeac, Lot. It houses a collection devoted to Figeac's most famous son, Jean-François Champollion. It was inaugurated 19 December 1986 in the presence of President François M ...


Notes and references


Further reading

* * * * * * * * *McDonald, Angela. ''Write Your Own Egyptian Hieroglyphs''. Berkeley:
University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facul ...
, 2007 (paperback, ). *


External links


Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics – Aldokkan
– Resources for those interested in learning hieroglyphs, compiled by Aayko Eyma
Hieroglyphics!
– Annotated directory of popular and scholarly resources
Full-text of ''The stela of Menthu-weser''
* Wikimedia's hieroglyph writing codes
Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts
– Ancient scripts free software fonts {{DEFAULTSORT:Egyptian Hieroglyphs 4th-millennium BC establishments History of writing Writing systems of Africa Abjad writing systems Ancient Egyptian culture