Hieroglyphs

Making art out of writing

The invention of script in the late fourth millennium BC marked a huge step in the cultural development of mankind. In ancient Egypt, the scribe was revered and honoured, and a seated scribe holding a papyrus roll was one of the most popular subjects in early ancient Egyptian art. Writing was considered to be the foundation for ordered life and government. Ideas, discoveries, wisdom and experience now need no longer die with the individual, but could be passed on to endless generations, indeed onto us, as we can read the literature, religious and scientific texts of these fascinating people.

The 26 letter Roman alphabet is a distant but direct descendant of the complex ornate script of ancient Egypt. Scholars believe that this script inspired the development of the world's first alphabetic scripts, Phoenician and Aramaic, from which the Greek and Roman alphabets derive. 

Earlier still, it is thought that the idea of writing spread from Egypt to the Aegean, in particular influencing the mysterious and currently still undeciphered "Linear A" script of Minoan Crete, which has marked similarities to Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The ancient Egyptian script, like other early scripts,  was pictographic, where pictures were used to represent words like house, man, etc. Writing was associated with Thoth, the ibis headed god of learning and writing, and was referred to as "words of God". Later, the Greeks, retaining this original meaning, named the signs hieroglyphs, from the words "hieros" (meaning sacred) and "glyphen" (meaning to carve). 

Hieroglyphs make art out of writing and lend an extraordinary grace and beauty to inscribed text. Egyptian writing is a mixed script combining signs denoting ideas (ideograms) with phonetic signs.

Hieroglyphic writing was in use from around 3200 BC until the late 4th century AD. It was used extensively with relatively little change in form for some 3,000 years, not only in Egypt but also throughout the Near Eastern territories under Egyptian influence or control. The script persisted well into the Christian era, with the last known datable hieroglyphic inscription carved on 24th August 394 AD on the gate of Hadrian at Philae.

Hieroglyphs were usually written from left to right, but were also written from right to left, or in vertical columns. The direction of the human or animal forms indicate in which way the script should be read. Vowel sounds were consistently omitted, in very much the same way as Arabic or Hebrew. 

The development of cursive scripts

 As time developed, so did the hieroglyphic script, from  the formal classical style used on monuments, to a much simpler, cursive style. One style is known as "hieratic" (from the Greek hieratikos meaning "priestly") and the other is known as "demotic" (from the Greek demotikos meaning "popular"). The hieroglyphic system was used for funerary and religious texts, whilst the cursive Hieratic script was used primarily for administrative and literary texts. By the 26th Dynasty, the Demotic script had replaced Hieratic. These cursive scripts should not be confused with "cursive hieroglyphs", which were used for most of the Pharaonic period in religious writings, such as the "coffin texts" and the "Book of the Dead".

The Egyptians used hieroglyphs for nearly 3,500 years, beginning in about 3300 BC until the end of the fourth century AD. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in AD 391 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I and the last known inscription is from a temple far to the south not long after 391.

At the beginning of the third century AD, the Egyptians began to write their languages in a script composed of the Greek alphabet, to which were added seven characters derived ultimately from hieroglyphs. In this form the language came to be known as Coptic, a corruption of the Greek word for Egypt, "Aiguptios". Knowledge of how to read and write the hieroglyphic script was probably lost soon after it had been superseded and no key to its meaning was found until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

Classical speculation

Hieroglyphs fascinated many classical visitors to Egypt. The Greek historians, Herodotus (c.484-425 BC), and Diodorus, who lived at the time of Julius Caesar and travelled to Egypt between 60-57 BC, and the Roman historian Tacitus, (c.55-120 AD) were amongst those who mentioned these mysterious writings. 

Whilst these classical scholars rightly assumed that these hieroglyphs were concerned with historical events, it would be many more centuries before the secrets of the script would finally be revealed. 

The decipherment of hieroglyphs was the single greatest event in the development of Egyptology.

Hieroglyphs can be logograms, phonograms or determinatives, the symbols representing both ideograms and phonetic values.

Translating hieroglyphs therefore is not as straightforward as a=the symbol for an eagle.

Logograms:
These were individual signs whose meaning was roughly equivalent to their appearance, for instance, a shorthand diagram of the sky actually meant "sky". The symbol of the mouth actually meant the word "mouth".
Phonograms:
These are "sound signs" where the hieroglyph is used to try and picture the sound combination, for instance a bit like the word "belief" being depicted as a picture of a bee followed by a picture of a leaf. Phonograms consist of three types:
	1. 26 signs which each represent a single consonant, for instance the quail chick = w.
	2. Approximately 100 signs called bi-consonants which represent pairs of consonants, for instance the diagram of a house-plan = pr.
	3. About 40-50 signs called tri-consonants which represent trios of consonants, for instance the adjective "good" which was pronounced "nfr".
	Having one hieroglyph that replaced common pairs or trios of consonants would help simplify writing by eliminating large numbers of characters.
Determinatives:
These were pictures of types of things which were placed at the end of words made up of phonograms. Determinatives would essentially "determine" or indicate what type of words they were, attempting to give a general idea of the meaning of the word.

Pronunciation problems

One of the most difficult aspects of pronouncing a section of hieroglyphic text is that there were no vowels in the written form of the Ancient Egyptian language, only consonants. The study of the Coptic language, a direct descendant of Ancient Egyptian, as well as surviving translations of Egyptian words in the languages of Assyrian, Babylonian and Greek has enabled the vocalisation of many Ancient Egyptian words to be partially reconstructed.

The easiest conventional method of making Ancient Egyptian words pronounceable is to read the signs and insert a letter "e" wherever necessary. For instance, the word "s" becomes "se", the word "pr" becomes "per" and the word "nfr" becomes "nefer".

Translation of 1-Consonant signs

Transliterations of words are generally arranged basically according to the following values which are assigned to the Egyptian letters or phonetic symbols:

Letter:	A (eagle)	N (nile/water)	G (stand for jar)
Hieroglyph:
Letter:	I (reed)	R (mouth)	T (loaf)
Hieroglyph:
Letter:	Y (double reed)	H (twisted flax)	TH (rope)
Hieroglyph:
Letter:	B (foot)	KH (placenta)	W (quail chick)
Hieroglyph:
Letter:	P (mat)	S (folded cloth)	D (t) (hand)
Hieroglyph:
Letter:	F (horned viper)	Q (hill)	TCH/DJ (snake)
Hieroglyph:
Letter:	M (owl)	K (basket)	L (lion)
Hieroglyph:

Although a total of over 6000 hieroglyphic signs have been identified, the majority of these were introduced during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Prior to this, during the main Pharaonic era of Egyptian history, fewer than a thousand symbols are actually attested, with an even smaller number being in regular use. With a nucleus of frequent basic signs, others were simply invented as they became necessary.