A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a

character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

of the ancient Egyptian writing system.

Logographic 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 ...

scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In

Neoplatonism Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some ...

, especially during the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

, a "hieroglyph" was an artistic representation of an

esoteric Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas ...

idea, which Neoplatonists believed actual Egyptian hieroglyphs to be. The word ''hieroglyphics'' refers to a hieroglyphic script. The Egyptians invented the pictorial script, which refers to any writing system that employs images as symbols for various semantic entities, rather than the abstract signs used by alphabets. The appearance of these distinctive figures in 3000 BCE marked the beginning of Egyptian

civilization A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). ...

. Though based on images, Egyptian script was more than a sophisticated form of picture-writing. Each picture/

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 ...

served one of three functions: (1) to represent the image of a thing or action, (2) to stand for a sound or the sounds of one to as many as three syllables, or (3) to clarify the precise meaning of adjoining glyphs. Writing hieroglyphs required some artistic skill, limiting the number of scholars chosen to learn it. Only those privileged with an extensive education (i.e. the

pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: '' pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until th ...

nobility Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The character ...

and

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in partic ...

s) were able to read and write hieroglyphs; others used simpler versions more suited for everyday handwriting: first 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 ...

script, and later the demotic.

List of scripts and script-like systems sometimes labeled 'hieroglyphic'

Anatolian hieroglyphs Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once commonly known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian, not Hittite, and the te ...

* Aztec hieroglyphs *

Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...

* Cretan hieroglyphs *

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, ...

Mayan hieroglyphs Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, is historically the native writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found whi ...

Mi'kmaq hieroglyphs The Mi'kmaq (also ''Mi'gmaq'', ''Lnu'', ''Miꞌkmaw'' or ''Miꞌgmaw''; ; ) are a First Nations people of the Northeastern Woodlands, indigenous to the areas of Canada's Atlantic Provinces and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec as well as the n ...

* Muisca hieroglyphs * Ojibwe hieroglyphs * Olmec hieroglyphs * Rongorongo One of the two forms of the Meroitic writing system is usually described as "Meroitic hieroglyphs" because the characters are similar to and in most cases derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. They are used, however, not as logographs but as an

alphasyllabary An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel n ...

. In

Eastern Slavic languages The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Sibe ...

, the term hieroglyph refers to any morphemic script, and is commonly synonymous to Chinese and Japanese writing.

References

External links

* * {{Authority control Etymologies Egyptian inventions

List of scripts and script-like systems sometimes labeled 'hieroglyphic'

See also

References

Further reading

External links