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Hieroglyphic
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.In total, there were about 1,000 graphemes in use during the Old Kingdom period; this number decreased to 750–850 during the Middle Kingdom, but rose instead to around 5,000 signs during the Ptolemaic period. Antonio Loprieno, ''Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction'' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 12. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet, the first widely adopted phonetic writing system. Moreover, owing in large part to the Greek and Aramaic sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egyptian Language
The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian (; ), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages 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 decipherment of the ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century. Egyptian is one of the earliest known written languages, first recorded in the hieroglyphic script in the late 4th millennium BC. It is also the longest-attested human language, with a written record spanning over 4,000 years. Its classical form, known as " Middle Egyptian," served as the vernacular of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and remained the literary language of Egypt until the Roman period. By the time of classical antiquity, the spoken language had evolved into Demotic, and by the Roman era, diversified into various Coptic dialects. These were eventually supplanted by Arabic after the Muslim conquest of Egypt, although Bohairic Coptic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Egyptian Literature
Ancient Egyptian literature was written with the Egyptian language from ancient Egypt's History of ancient Egypt, pharaonic period until the end of Egypt (Roman province), Roman domination. It represents the oldest Text corpus, corpus of Literature of Egypt, Egyptian literature. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's Ancient literature, earliest literature. Writing in ancient Egypt—both Egyptian hieroglyphs, hieroglyphic and hieratic—first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the late phase of predynastic Egypt. By the Old Kingdom (26th century BC to 22nd century BC), literary works included Ancient Egyptian funerary texts, funerary texts, epistles and letters, hymns and poems, and commemorative Autobiography, autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Middle Kingdom (21st century BC to 17th century BC) that a narrative Egyptian literature was create ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Sinaitic Script
The Proto-Sinaitic script is a Middle Bronze Age writing system known from a small corpus of about Serabit el-Khadim proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, 30-40 inscriptions and fragments from Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, two inscriptions from Wadi el-Hol in Middle Egypt. Together with about 20 known Proto-Canaanite alphabet, Proto-Canaanite inscriptions, it is also known as Early Alphabetic, i.e. the History of the alphabet, earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet. According to common theory, Canaanites or Hyksos who spoke a Canaanite languageJohn F. Healey, ''The Early Alphabet'' University of California Press, 1990, , p. 18. repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script. The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid-19th (early date) a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower Egypt were amalgamated by Menes, who is believed by the majority of List of Egyptologists, Egyptologists to have been the same person as Narmer. The history of ancient Egypt unfolded as a series of stable kingdoms interspersed by the "Periodization of ancient Egypt, Intermediate Periods" of relative instability. These stable kingdoms existed in one of three periods: the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age; the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age; or the New Kingdom of Egypt, New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age. The pinnacle of ancient Egyptian power was achieved during the New Kingdom, which extended its rule to much of Nubia and a considerable portion of the Levant. After this period, Egypt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hieratic
Hieratic (; ) 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 BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus. Etymology In the second century, the term ''hieratic'' was used for the first time by the Greek scholar Clement of Alexandria to describe this Ancient Egyptian writing system. The term derives from the Greek for 'priestly writing' () because at that time, for more than eight and a half centuries, hieratic had been used traditionally only for religious texts and literature. ''Hieratic'' can also be an adjective meaning 'of or associated with sacred persons or offices; sacerdotal'. Development Hieratic developed as a cursive form of hieroglyphic script in the Naqada III period of Ancient Egypt, roughly 3200–3000 BCE. Although handwritten printed hieroglyphs continued to b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demotic (Egyptian)
Demotic (from ''dēmotikós'', 'popular') is the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Nile Delta. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and Egyptian hieroglyphs, hieroglyphic scripts. By convention, the word "Demotic" is capitalized in order to distinguish it from demotic Greek. Script The Demotic script was referred to by the Egyptians as 'document writing', which the second-century scholar Clement of Alexandria called 'letter-writing', while early Western scholars, notably Thomas Young (scientist), Thomas Young, formerly referred to it as "wikt:enchorial, Enchorial Egyptian". The script was used for more than a thousand years, and during that time a number of developmental stages occurred. It is written and read from right to left, while earlier hieroglyphs could be written from top to bottom, left to right, or right to left. Parts of the Demotic Greek Magical Papyri were written with a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egyptian Hieroglyphs (Unicode Block)
Egyptian Hieroglyphs is a Unicode block containing the Gardiner's sign list of Egyptian hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined Ideogram, ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct char .... Block Standardized variants The Egyptian Hieroglyphs Unicode block has 100 standardized variants defined to specify rotated signs. (Rotation is clockwise when the text is rendered from left-to-right but counter-clockwise if the text is mirrored right-to-left.) * Variation selector-1 (VS1) (U+FE00) can be used to rotate 40 signs by 90°:U+13091, 1310F, 1311C, 13121, 13127, 13139, 131A0, 131B1, 131B8–131B9, 131CB, 131E0, 131F9–131FA, 1327B, 1327F, 13285, 1328C, 132AA, 132CB, 132DC, 132E7, 13307, 1331B, 13322, 1333C, 13377–13378, 13399–1339A, 133D3, 133E5, 133E7, 133F2, 133F5–133F6, 13416, 13419–1341A and 13423 * VS2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boustrophedon
Boustrophedon () is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the left. The original term comes from , ', a composite of , ', "ox"; , ', "turn"; and the adverbial suffix -, -', "like, in the manner of" – that is, "like the ox turns hile plowing. It is mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. It was a common way of writing on stone in ancient Greece, becoming less and less popular throughout the Hellenistic period. Many ancient scripts, such as Etruscan, Safaitic, and Sabaean, were frequently or even typically written boustrophedon. Reverse boustrophedon The wooden boards and other incised artefacts of Rapa Nui also bear a boustrophedonic script called Rongorongo, which remains undeciphered. In Rongorongo, the text in alternate lines was rotated 180 degrees rather than mirr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ideogram
An ideogram or ideograph (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'idea' + 'to write') is a symbol that is used within a given writing system to represent an idea or concept in a given language. (Ideograms are contrasted with phonogram (linguistics), phonograms, which indicate sounds of speech and thus are independent of any particular language.) Some ideograms are more arbitrary than others: some are only meaningful assuming preexisting familiarity with some convention; others more directly resemble their signifieds. Ideograms that represent physical objects by visually illustrating them are called ''pictograms''. * Numeral system, Numerals and List of mathematical symbols, mathematical symbols are ideograms, for example ⟨1⟩ 'one', ⟨2⟩ 'two', ⟨+⟩ 'plus', and ⟨=⟩ 'equals'. * The ampersand ⟨&⟩ is used in many languages to represent the word ''and'', originally a stylized Ligature (writing), ligature of the Latin word . * Other typographical examples include ⟨§⟩ 'sect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cursive Hieroglyphs
Cursive hieroglyphs, or hieroglyphic book hand, are a form of Egyptian hieroglyphs commonly used for handwritten religious documents, such as the Book of the Dead. This style of writing was typically written with ink and a reed brush 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'' or ''papyruses'') can a ..., wood, or leather. It was particularly common during the Ramesside Period, and many famous documents, such as the Papyrus of Ani, use it. It was also employed on wood for religious literature such as the Coffin Texts. Cursive hieroglyphs should not be confused with the truly cursive form of hieroglyphs known as hieratic. Hieratic has many ligatures and signs unique to itself. However, there is a certain degree of influence from hieratic in the visual appearance of some signs. One signi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brahmic Scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used by various languages in several language families in South Asia, South, East Asia, East and Southeast Asia: Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan, Dravidian languages, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman languages, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic, Austronesian languages, Austronesian, and Tai languages, Tai. They were also the source of the Collation, dictionary order (''gojūon'') of Japanese language, Japanese ''kana''. History Brahmic scripts descended from the Brāhmī script, Brahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script Edicts of Ashoka, for imperial edicts. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
