It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Egyptian hieroglyph. (Discuss)

The word hieroglyph derives from the Greek word ἱερογλύφος / hieroglúphos, formed itself from ἱερός / hierós ("sacred") and γλύφειν / glýphein ("to engrave"). Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... It has been suggested that Hieroglyph (French Wiki article) be merged into this article or section. ...

In the Greco-Roman era, the word meant "someone who draws hieroglyphs" and not the hieroglyphs themselves, which were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικά (γράμματα) / tà hieroglyphiká (grámmata), that is "graven characters" on monuments (such as steles, temples and tombs). In the end, by an overlap in meanings, the word hieroglyph came to be used for the hieroglyphic characters themselves. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Classical antiquity. ... In a vascular plant, the stele is the central part of the root or stem containing the vascular tissue. ...

Egyptians themselves called their writing medou-netjer ("Divine Word") , being, in transliteration, mdw nṯr"

By extension, the term hieroglyphs is often extended to other forms of writing using the same logographic principles as Egyptian. Thus one speaks of Hittite hieroglypics. However one does not say of Chinese ideographs that they are hieroglyphs. A Chinese logogram A logogram, or logograph, is a single written character which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... Hittite can refer to either: The ancient Anatolian people called the Hittites; or The Hittite language, an ancient Indo-European language they spoke. ... Hieroglyphs are a system of writing used by the Ancient Egyptians, using a combination of logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements. ... A Chinese character. ...

History and evolution

Hieroglyphic writing was observed at the end of the Fourth millennium B.C. In the era of the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, about 700 hieroglyphs existed. By the Greco-Roman period, they numbered more than 5,000. The Old Kingdom is the name commonly given to that period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization complexity and achievement - this was the first of three so-called Kingdom periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the Nile Valley (the... The Middle Kingdom is: a old name for China a period in the History of Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom of Egypt This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The New Kingdom is the period in Egyptian history between the 16th century BCE and the 11th century BCE, covering the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of Egypt. ...

Hieroglyphs are pictograms: they represent something tangible, often easily recognizable, even for someone who doesn't know the meaning of the sign. For the drawing of hieroglyphs, the Egyptians took inspiration from their environment: objects found in their daily lives, animals, plants, parts of the body. Hieroglyphic writing was used for more than 3,000 years. The last ruler's name which was written in hieroglyphs—during the rule of the Roman Emperor Decius (A.D. 249-251)—was found in the Temple of Esna. The latest known inscription (so far) is dated August 24, 294, and was found in the Temple of Philae. Pictogram for public toilets A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents an object or a concept by illustration. ... Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius (201- July 1, 251), Roman emperor (249 - 251), was born at Budalia near Sirmium in lower Pannonia. ... Tourist bazaar The Egyptian city of Esna (known in antiquity as Iunyt, Ta-senet, and Latopolis) is located on the west bank of the River Nile, some 55 km south of Luxor. ... August 24 is the 236th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (237th in leap years), with 129 days remaining. ... Events Tuoba Lu Guan succeeds Tuoba Fu as chieftain of the Chinese Tuoba tribe. ... Philae (or Pilak or Paaleq [Egyptian: remote place or the end or the angle island]; [Arabic: Anas el Wagud]) is an island in the Nile River and the previous site of an Ancient Egyptian temple complex in southern Egypt. ...

Hieroglyphics were carved in stone or even, in the case of hieratic writing, drawn with a reed stylus (calame or calamus reed) on a less durable surface (cf. M. Malinine, L'hiératique anormal, in: Textes et langages de l'Égypte pharaonique, Cairo, IFAO, 1972) Development of hieratic script from hieroglyphs; after Champollion. ... Calamus may mean: Sweet flag Acorus calamus, an herb Calamus (palm genus), a genus of rattan palms Calamus (fish genus), a genus of porgies (Sparidae) Calamus, Iowa Calamus, Wisconsin Calamus, a DTP application This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the... Reed may mean: Reed (plant), a plant with a tall strong hollow stem that grows in large groups in shallow water or on marshy ground Reed (music), a thin strip of material which vibrates to make music, often made from the stem of the reed plant Reed College, a college...

The use of engraved hieroglypics was limited to the applications where the aesthetic and/or the magical value of the words had importance: formulas for offerings and funeral frescoes, religious texts, official inscriptions.

Hieratic writing is a cursive form of hieroglyphics. It was reserved for administrative documents and private documents. Written with a reed stylus, it was written on papyrus, on shards of pottery or limestone, on parchment or even on wooden tablets. Egyptologists distinguish these from hieroglyphics called linear (which were painted on wooden sarcophagi and papyrus of the Book of the Dead. For a long time, linear hieroglyphics retained the figurative aspect of carved hieroglyphics, but they were drawn with less precision than hieratic writing. Cursive is any style of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single (complicated) stroke. ... Papyrus plant Cyperus papyrus at Kew Gardens, London Papyrus is an early form of paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that grows to 5 meters (15 ft) in height and was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt. ... German parchmenter, 1568 Parchment is a material for the pages of a book or codex, made from fine calf skin, sheep skin or goat skin. ... An Egyptologist is any archaeologist or historian who specialises in Egyptology, the scientific study of Ancient Egypt and its antiquities. ... A sarcophagus is a stone container for a coffin or body. ... Book of the Dead is the common name for ancient Egyptian funerary texts known as The Book of Coming [or Going] Forth By Day. ...

Beginning with the Saite Era (XXVI Egyptian Dynasty), hieratic writing was partially supplanted by a new cursive script, demotic. It was an extreme simplification of hieratic writing, reserved for administrative actions and documents of everyday life, whence its name: "popular" writing. Hieratic writing was not then used except for depositing religious or priestly texts, jointly with hieroglypics, whence its name: sacerdotal writing. In the Ptolemaic era, Greek was commonly used as the language of administration; from 146 BC, contracts written only in demotic had lost their legal value. Sais was the chief city of the fifth nome of Lower Egypt, located in the western edge of the Nile Delta. ... The Twenty-eighth dynasty of Egypt had one ruler, Amyrtaeus, who was a descendant of the Saite kings of the Twenty-sixth dynasty, and led a successful revolt against the Persians on the death of Darius II. No monuments of his reign have been found, and little is known of... Demotic (disambiguation) The term Demotic can refer to: The Demotic Greek dialect of the Greek language. ... Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Greats generals, was appointed satrap of Egypt after Alexanders death in 323 BC. In 305 BC he declared himself King Ptolemy I, later known as Soter (saviour). ...

The Coptic language is the last stage of Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is still used in our own time, but only as the language of liturgy. It is written using the Greek alphabet, to which were added 7 signs borrowed from demotic in order to transcribe sounds that are foreign to Greek. The Coptic language is the last phase of the Egyptian languages, and is the direct descendant of the ancient Egyptian language written in the hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts. ... From the Greek word λειτουργια, which can be transliterated as leitourgia, meaning the work of the people, a liturgy comprises a prescribed religious ceremony, according to the traditions of a particular religion; it may refer to, or include, an elaborate formal ritual (such as the Catholic Mass), a daily activity such... Note: This article contains special characters. ...

Clearly, ancient Egyptian writing is no longer used to write any modern language. However, hieroglyphics, by means of Proto-Sinaitic script, gave birth to the Phoenician alphabet which, in its turn, gave birth to the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek alphabets, and thence the the Latin and Cyrillic characters. (On this subject, see John F. Healy, The Early Alphabet, in : Reading the Past, British Museum Press, 1996) It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with History of alphabets. ... The Phoenician alphabet dates from around 1400 BC and is related to the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. ... ‹ The template below has been proposed for deletion. ... The Aramaic alphabet is an abjad alphabet designed for writing the Aramaic language. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ...

The System of Writing

Engraved hieroglyphics are all more or less figurative: they represent real or imaginary elements, sometimes stylized and simplified, but perfectly recognizable in most cases.

Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphics, considered the Father of Egyptology, defined the hieroglyphic system as the following: "It is a complex system, a writing that is at the same time figurative, symbolic and phonetic in the same text, the same sentence, I would say almost in the same word." (Jean-François Champollion, Letter to M. Dacier concerning the alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphics, September 22, 1822.) Jean-François Champollion For the Champollion comet rendezvous spacecraft, see Champollion (spacecraft). ... Jean-François Champollion For the Champollion comet rendezvous spacecraft, see Champollion (spacecraft). ...

In fact, the same character can even, according to context, be interpreted in diverse ways: as a phonogram (phonetic reading), as an ideogram, or as a determinative (semantic reading). The determinative was not read, but facilitated reading by differentiating the word from its homphones. Manufacturers put records inside protective and decorative cardboard jackets and an inner paper sleeve to protect the grooves from dust and scratches. ... A Chinese character. ... In mesopotamian cuneiform texts (i. ...

Note : In the sections that follow, hieroglyphs will be transliterated—that is to say, transcribed into Latin characters. Transliteration in a narrow sense is a mapping from one system of writing into another. ...

Phonetic reading

A bull's head, a snake, a hand...

The character is read independently from its meaning, according to the principle of the rebus. Phonograms are formed, whether with one consonant (signs called mono- or uniliteral) or by two consonants (biliteral signs) or by three (triliteral signs.) The 24 uniliteral signs make up the hieroglyphic pseudo-alphabet (see below). A rebus (Latin: by things) is a kind of word puzzle which uses pictures to represent words or parts of words, for example: H + picture of ear = Hear. ... In the terminology used to discuss the grammar of the Semitic languages, a triliteral is a root containing a sequence of three consonants. ...

Hieroglyphic writing appears as an abjad: it does not write out the vowels, in contrast, for example, to cuneiform. An abjad is a type of writing system where there is one symbol per consonantal phoneme, sometimes also called a consonantary. ... Cuneiform (from the Latin word for wedge-shaped) can refer to: Mesopotamian clay tablet 492 BCE, Field Museum of Natural History,Chicago, Illinois. ...

Thus, hieroglyphic writing representing a duck is read as sȝ, because these are the consonants of the word indicating this animal. One could nevertheless use the sign of the duck without a link to the meaning in order to represent the phonemes "s" and "?" at the same time (independently vowels which could accompany these consonants) and in this way write words like this: s?, "son" or, complementing other signs that could be detailed further on in the text, s?, "keep, watch", sȝṯ.w, "hard ground": In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ...

= the character sȝ;

= the same character used only in order to signify, according to the context, "duck" or, with the appropriate determinative, "son", two words having the same consonants; the meaning of the little vertical stroke will be explained further on:

= the character sȝ in the vein of the word sȝw, "keep, watch"

The hieroglyphic "alphabet"

For certain characters, the principle of the rebus would become that of the acrostic: one no longer reads anything but the first consonant as a word. For example, the consonants of the word for "mouth", An acrostic (from the late Greek akróstichon, from ákros, extreme, and stíchos, verse) is a poem or other text written in an alphabetic script, in which the first letter, syllable or word of each verse, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out another message. ...

are r and ?. It is these consonants which are read when the word effectively means "the mouth." This character, however, is used in other cases for its initial consonant only, r. In the same way

"length of folded cloth", is read snb, "being in good health" in the optative formula "may he live, be prosperous, in good health", if not as the uniliteral s (see on this subject Alan H. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, London (1973), p. 507) In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ...

Thus, one can regroup the 24 uniliteral signs in a sort of hieroglyphic "alphabet," which, however, was never used as such to replace other hieroglyphs, even though it might have been possible to do so: in fact, it would have been possible to write all Egyptian words in the manner of these signs, but the Egyptians never made the jump to that step and never simplified their complex writing into an alphabet.

The Egyptian pseudo-alphabet is therefore made up of characters written with nothing but a single consonant, although certain of them signified several consonants because they were used as ideograms. Here is the alphabetic order of the dictionaries and grammars:

Missing here is the digram which was used in Middle Egyptian to write out the yod "y" as a final syllable (cf. A. H. Gardiner, op. cit., p. 29). Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Phonetic Complements

Egyptian writing is often redundant: in fact, it happens very frequently that a word might follow several characters writing the same sounds, in order to guide the reader. For example, the word nfr, "beautiful, good, perfect", could only be written by means of a unique triliteral which was read nfr:

However, it is considerably more common to add to this triliteral the uniliterals for f and r. The word is this written nfr+f+r but one reads nfr.

Redundant characters accompanying biliteral or triliteral signs are called phonetic complements. They are placed in front of the signs to finish them (rarely), after the sign (as a general rule) or they even frame it—thus serving as an aid to the reader, inasmuch as the scribe, for reasons of calligraphy, would sometimes invert the order of the signs (see below):

= mdw +d +w (the complementaries are placed after the sign) → it reads mdw, "tongue"

= ḫ +p +ḫpr +r +j (the complementaries frame the sign) → it reads ḫpr.j, "Khepri". Khepri as a scarab beetle, pushing the sun across the sky In Egyptian mythology, Khepri (also spelt Khepera, Kheper, Chepri, Khepra) is the name of a minor god. ...

Notably, phonetic complements allow the reader to differentiate between homophones: in fact, the signs don't always have a unique reading. For example, "the seat," Homonyms (in Greek homoios = identical and onoma = name) are words which have the same form (orthographic/phonetic) but unrelated meaning. ...

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 us to know which reading will follow:

st :

st

(written st+t ; the last character is the determinative of "the house" or that which takes us there), "seat, throne, place",

st (written st+t ; the last character is "the egg", determinative of the name of the goddess Isis), "Isis", Isis is a goddess in the Egyptian belief. ...

ws =

wsjr (written ws+jr, with, as a phonetic complement, "the egg", which is read jr, following the determinative of "god"), "Osiris", Osiris (Greek language, also Usiris; the Egyptian language name is variously transliterated Asar, Aser, Ausar, or Ausare) is the Egyptian God of the dead and the underworld. ...

ḥtm =

ḥtm.t (written ḥ+ḥtm+m+t, with the determinative of "the jackal"), a kind of wild animal, perhaps a bear,

ḥtm (written ḥ+ḥtm+t, with the the determinative of the flying bird), "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

bnrj, which is correctly read as bnr, the j not having been saved except in order to keep a written connection with the ancient word (in the same fashion as the English-language words through, knife, or victuals, which are no longer read the way they are written.)

Semantic Reading

Besides a phonetic interpretation, characters can also be read for their meaning: in this instance logograms are being spoken (or ideograms) and semagrams; the latter are also called determinatives). (cf. Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian, A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press (1995), p. 13) A Chinese logogram A logogram, or logograph, is a single written character which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... A Chinese character. ... Semagram, literally semantic symbol, is a picture or glyph associated with a concept. ...

Logograms

A hieroglyph used as a logogram 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: A Chinese logogram A logogram, or logograph, is a single written character which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ...

rˁ, "sun"

pr, "house"

swt, "reed" - the t is the phonetic complement.

ḏw, "mountain", etc

In some cases, the semantic connection is indirect (metonymic or metaphoric): In language, a metaphor (from the Greek: metapherin) is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison between two seemingly unrelated subjects. ...

nṯr, "god" ; the character in fact represents a temple flag (standard)

bȝ, " bâ" (soul) ; the character is the traditional representation of a "bâ", a bird with a human head

dšr, "flamingo"; the corresponding phonogram means "red", and the bird is associated by metonymy with this color.

Determinatives

Determinatives or semagrams are placed at the end of the word. These mute characters serve to clarify the semantic domain of the word, its lexical field, in order to sharpen its meaning: homographic characters being very common (even more frequently written than the consonants by themselves), the recourse to determinatives is crucial. If a similar procedure existed in English, homographic words would be followed by an index which would not be read but which would fine-tune the meaning: "retort [chemistry]]" and "retort [rhetoric]" would thus be distinguished. Semagram, literally semantic symbol, is a picture or glyph associated with a concept. ...

A number of determinatives exist: divinities, humans, parts of the human body, animals, plants, etc. Certain determinatives possess a literal meaning and a figurative meaning. For example, a roll of papyrus,

is used to define "books," but also abstract ideas. The determinative of the plural is a shortcut to signal three occurrences of the word, that is to say, its plural (since the Egyptian language was familiar with a dual, sometimes indicated by two strokes). This special character is explained below. Look up Plural on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. ...

Here are several examples of the use of determinatives borrowed from the book, Je lis les hiéroglyphes ("I am reading hieroglyphics") by Jean Capart, which illustrate their importance:

nfrw (w and the three strokes are the marks of the plural: [literally] "the beautiful young people", that is to say, the young military recruits. The word has as a determinative:

The determinative is one of babies and children.

nfr.t (.t is here the suffix which forms the feminine): "the nubile young woman", with

as the determinative of the woman;

nfrw (the tripling of the character serving to express the plural, flexional ending w) : "foundations (of a house)", with the house as a determinative,

;

nfr : "clothing," where

is the determinative for lengths of cloth;

nfr : "wine" or "beer,"

with a jug as the determinative.

All these words have a meliorative connotation: "good, beautiful, perfect." A recent dictionary, the Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian by Raymond A. Faulkner, gives some twenty words which are read nfr or which are formed from this word—proof of the extraordinary richness of the Egyptian language.

Meaning derived from reading

Hieroglyphs are written from right to left, from left to right, or from top to bottom, the usual direction being from right to left. The reader, in order to get the sense of the text, must consider the direction in which the asymmetrical hieroglyphs are turned. For example, when human figures and animals, easily spotted, are turned to the left, they must be read from left to right, and vice versa.

Words are not separated by blanks or by punctuation marks. However, certain characters appear (especially at the end of words) that sometimes make it possible to distinguish words. It is nevertheless evident that only a solid understanding of the language and of the syntax allows the reader to cut the text into words.

Quads

Hieroglyphs are not, however, simply aligned one following the other: in fact, they respond to one another harmoniously in a virtual square (virtual because it is not drawn), or quad [quadrat] (also written as cadrat), in the same manner as sinograms. The difference between them and sinograms, however, is that characters do not entirely fill the quad:

• Hieroglyphs exist that take up the entire quad:

• Others occupy half of it, vertically or horizontally:

• Others, finally, take up a quarter of the quad:

In text written from left to right, the quads are evidently wrapped around each other from left to right; the signs which occupy them are read from left to right and then from top to bottom or even from top to bottom and then left to right. If the text is arranged in vertical columns, the quads are piled up, one after the other, but this does not prevent the meaning of the reading from being the same as that in which the text is aranged in vertical lines.

Calligraphic constraints

Several calligraphic pecularities exist; here are the principal instances:

1. Characters respond to one another in quads (see above);
2. To avoid a quad being incomplete, sometimes the signs are inverted in order to make the entire quad more compact. Similarly, with a care for aesthetics, the phonetic complements are chosen with care, even though they might be redundant.
3. Sometimes hieroglyphs of perching birds are inverted in a quad (the "p" for example); in this case, the small character precedes and occupies the space of the quad.
4. Signs can be omitted, especially those signifying the phonemes ȝ and j ;
5. Signs signifying the gods are positioned at the beginning of a statement, of a syntactic unit (syntagm) or of a compound word, by means of a respectful inversion.

Even if hieroglyphs are inverted in the original Egyptian text, the reading and the transliteration take no account of that.

Additional Signs

Replacement stroke

A character is sometimes judged to be offensive: "put into the world."

Offensive characters, funerals, taboos, rare or complex, can be replaced by a slanted stroke:

• the verb

ms(j), "put into the world," may be written

the determinative of the woman giving birth (the last character) being sometimes deemed offensive;

• the name

m(w)t, "Death, to die", will also be written

to avoid the determinative of "the enemy on the ground" (last character), a funerary sign.

Cartouche

Rarely, the names of gods are placed within a cartouche; the two last names of the sitting king are always placed within a cartouche: A cartouche, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, is an oblong enclosure with a vertical line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty with pharao Sneferu. ...

jmn-rˁ, "Amon-Rê " ;

qrwjwȝpdrȝ.t, "Cleopatra."

Filling stroke

A filling stroke is used in order to end a quad which would be incomplete without it.

Signs Stuck 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, indicating the sign is an ideogram;
• The two strokes of the "dual" and the three strokes of the "plural";
• The direct notation of flexional endings, for example:

Spelling

The idea of orthography—"correct" spelling—in Egyptian hieroglyphics doesn't pose itself in the same terms as it does in modern languages. In fact, one or several variants exist for almost every word. It can be wondered whether the Ancient Egyptians had any concept of correct spelling. One finds: The orthography of a language is the set of symbols (glyphs and diacritics) used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to write these glyphs correctly, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. ...

• Redundancies;
• Omission of graphemes, which are ignored whether they are intentional or not;
• 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, much more problematic when the writing is cursive: hieratic writing, but especially demotic, where the schematization of the signs is extreme.

A grapheme designates the atomic unit in written language. ...

References

The above article is a translation of the French Wikipedia article "Hieroglyphe", a featured article, accessed March 11, 2006. Sections at the end may be under construction by French Wiki. 11 March is the 70th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (71st in Leap year). ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...