Egyptian hieroglyph

Hieroglyphs are a writing system used by the Ancient Egyptians, that contained a combination of logographic, alphabetic, and ideographic elements.

Etymology and usage

The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek ('); the adjective hieroglyphic, as well as related words such as (' 'one who writes hieroglyphs', from (hierós 'sacred') and γλύφειν (glýfein 'to carve' or 'to write'). Hieroglyphs themselves, were called (γράμματα) ( (grámmata), 'engraved characters') on monuments (such as stelae, temples and tombs). The word hieroglyph has come to be used for the individual hieroglyphic characters themselves.

The Egyptian phrase for hieroglyphs is n:t:r-R8-m-d-w-t-S43-Z1:Z1:Z1 or more simply R8-S43-Z1:Z1:Z1(often transliterated as medew-netjer "Divine Words").

The word "hieroglyphics" is derived from the fact that the Greeks called hieroglyphs 'hieroglyphic letters', but sometimes simply dropped the "letters" part, calling them 'the hieroglyphics' ('letters' being understood). While "hieroglyphics" is commonly used, it is technically incorrect.

"Hieroglyph" is also the term used by many to refer to characters in other pictorial writing systems, such as Anatolian hieroglyphs or the Maya hieroglyphs.

Hieroglyphology (archaically "hierology") refers to the study of hieroglyphs or hieroglyphic texts.

History and evolution

Hieroglyphs emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from circa 4000 BC resemble hieroglyphic writing For many years the earliest known hieroglyphic inscription was the Narmer Palette, found during excavations at Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar) in the 1890s, which has been dated to circa 3200 BC. However, in 1998 a German archeological team under Gunter Dreyer excavating at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa'ab) uncovered tomb U-j of a Predynastic ruler, and recovered three hundred clay labels inscribed with proto-hieroglyphs, dating to the Naqada IIIA period of the 33rd century BC ^*." target="_blank" >The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa'ab in Abydos, which dates from the Second Dynasty [http://xoomer.virgilio.it/francescoraf/hesyra/pribsn.htm.

Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that functioned like an alphabet; logographs, representing morphemes; and determinatives, or ideograms, which narrowed down the meaning of a logographic or phonetic word.

As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed along side the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone contains parallel texts in hieroglyphic and demotic writing.

Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BC), and after Alexander's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Macedonian and Roman 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 believe that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true Egyptians' from 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 fourth century, 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 AD 391 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I; the last known inscription is from a temple far to the south not long after 391.

In the fifth century appeared the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, a spurious explanation of almost 200 glyphs. Authoritative yet largely false, the work was a lasting impediment to the decipherment of Egyptian writing. But whereas earlier scholarship emphasized Greek origin of the document, more recent work has recognized remnants of genuine knowledge, and casts it as an attempt by an Egyptian intellectual to rescue an unrecoverable past. The Hieroglyphica was a major influence on Renaissance symbolism, particularly the emblem book of Andrea Alciato, and including the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna.

Various modern scholars attempted to decipher the glyphs over the centuries, notably Johannes Goropius Becanus in the 16th century and Athanasius Kircher in the 17th, but all such attempts met with failure. The breakthrough in decipherment was done by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion beginning in the early 1800s. The discovery in 1799 of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's troops (during Campaigns of 1798) provided the critical information which allowed Champollion to discover the nature of the script by the 1830s:

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 - Letter to M. Dacier, September 27 1822

This was a major triumph for the young discipline of Egyptology.

Hieroglyphs survive today in two forms: Directly, through half a dozen Demotic glyphs added to the Greek alphabet when writing Coptic; and indirectly, as the inspiration for the original alphabet that was ancestral to nearly every other alphabet ever used, including the Roman alphabet.

Script

The hieroglyphic script contained 24 uniliterals (symbols that stood for single consonants, much like English letters) which today we associate with the 26 glyphs listed below. (Note that the glyph associated with w/u also has a hieratic abbreviation.) However, the script had a much larger number of biliterals and a number of triliterals — glyphs which represented sequences of two or three consonants.

Each uniliteral glyph once had a unique reading, but several of these fell together as Old Egyptian developed into Middle Egyptian. For example, the folded-cloth glyph seems to have been originally an /s/ and the door-bolt glyph a /θ/ sound, but these both came to be pronounced as /s/ as the /θ/ sound was lost. A few uniliterals first appear in Middle Egyptian texts.

The traditional transliteration system shown on the left of the chart below is over a century old and is the one most commonly seen in texts. It includes several symbols such as "3" for sounds that were of unknown value at the time. Much progress has been made since, though there is still debate as to the details. For instance, it is now thought the "3" may have been an alveolar lateral approximant ("l") in Old Egyptian that was lost by Middle Egyptian. The consonants transcribed as voiced (d, g, dj) may actually have been ejective or, less likely, pharyngealized like the Arabic emphatic consonants. A good description can be found in Allen (2000). For other systems of transliteration, see transliteration of ancient Egyptian.

Note that, like the Arabic and Hebrew scripts today, few vowels were written. Therefore 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 3 and ʾ are commonly transliterated as a, as in Ra.

Uniliteral signs

|; perhaps retained in some words and dialects

Uniliteral signs
Sign		Traditional transliteration			Phonetic values per Allen (2000)
Sign			Say	Notes	Old Egyptian	Middle Egyptian
A	an Egyptian vulture	3	a	called aleph, a glottal stop	or	silent, , and
i	a reed		i/a	called yodh	an initial or final vowel; sometimes
i-i	a pair of reeds	y	y	double yodh	no record
y	pair of strokes or river (?)	y	y	double yodh	no record
a	an arm	ʾ	a	called ayin, a voiced pharyngeal fricative	perhaps
w or W	a quail chick or its hieratic abbreviation	w	w/u	called waw	~
b	a lower leg	b	b		~
p	a reed mat or stool	p	p		aspirated
f	a horned viper	f	f
m	an owl	m	m
n	a ripple of water	n	n			, sometimes
r	a mouth	r	r		see Old_Egyptian_mouth_sign.JPG	, sometimes (always in some dialects)
h	a reed shelter	h	h
H	a twisted wick		h	an emphatic h, a voiceless pharyngeal fricative
x	a placenta		kh	a voiceless velar fricative
X	an animal belly with tail		kh	a softer sound, a voiceless palatal fricative
s	a folded cloth	s	s	Old Egyptian sound for "door bolt" is unknown, but perhaps was z or th
z	a door bolt	s	s
S	a garden pool		sh
q	slope of a hill	or q	k	an emphatic k, a voiceless uvular plosive	ejective
k	a basket with a handle	k	k		aspirated in some words, palatalized
g	a jar stand	g	g		ejective
t	a bun	t	t		aspirated
T	a tethering rope	or tj	ch	as in English church	palatalized or
d	a hand	d	d		ejective
D	a cobra	or dj	j	as in English judge	ejective or

Biliteral signs

Biliteral signs
Aw	Ab	Ax	E9	D54	ib	Z11	nw
in	ir	A48	M40	V15	aA	F16	aq
aD	wA	wa	wp	wn	wr	wD	bA
bH	pA	pr	pH	T9	T10	mA	mi
mw	mn	N36	mr	Ab	mH	ms	mt
G14	md	nb	nm	M22-M22	nH	ns	nD
rw	rs	HA	Hw	Hp	N41	Hm	Hn
Hr	W14	HD	xA	xa	D43	xt	XA
Xn	D33	Xr	G39	V16	V17	sA	Aa18
sw	O50	sn	sk	F29	SA	Sw	Sm
Sn	V6	Sd	qs	qd	kA	km	gm
gs	U30	tA	ti	tp	T8	tm	TA
D37	di	DA	Dw	Dr	Dd

Triliteral signs

M1 iwn isw awt apr anx P6 aSA wAH wAs
wAD wab P4 wHm wsr N9 mAa nbw nfr nTr
rwD HqA Htp xpr xnt xrp xrw xsf Xnm Z9
T11 sbA spr M44 zmA snD xrp T32 sSm
stp sDm Sps Sma Sms O42 grg DbA

Examples

The glyphs in this cartouche are transliterated as:

Ptolmiis

p
t

l
m

i i s

though ii is considered a single letter and transliterated i or 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 an 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 for verbs of motion that gives the reader an idea of the meaning of the word.

External links

Glyphs and Grammars Resources for those interested in learning hieroglyphs, compiled by Aayko Eyma.
Hieroglyphs! Annotated directory of popular and scholarly resources.
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary by Jim Loy
Comprehensive Dictionary of Cartouches for all Egyptian Pharaohs
GreatScott.com's Hieroglyphs Commercial (free intro)
Glyphdoctors: Study Egyptology Online! Online courses in hieroglyphs and free discussion forums

References

Bronze Age writing systems | Egyptian languages | Hieroglyphs

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