Hieroglyphics
Introduction:
Hieroglyphics
is the origins of writing in Ancient Egypt. Around 3000BC, the hieroglyphs
appear, and the system seems to be fully formed at that time. There are hypothesis would be that the
Egyptians took the idea of writing from the Sumerian, but this is unsure
and with no prove for it.
For many many years this language had been a hard
secret for the whole world till 1822.
In 1799, French soldiers found a
stone tablet near Rosetta, Egypt. The inscription on the stone was written
in three languages: Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic, (a simplified form of
ancient Egyptian writing) and Greek. Jean Francois Champollion translated
the tablet and helped start the study of Egypt, which is called
Egyptology.
Anyway, the hieroglyphic signs themselves are very
different from their cuneiform counterpart, and use pictures of typical relate to a specific object or idea, such as
man, woman, and water , so most of the system must have been developed in
Egypt proper.
Champollion was not the first one who tries to solve the secret of hieroglyphic. Many tried to do that before. The first one who tried to solve it was Sylvester De Case in 1802 and Tomas Bang in 1814 who found translated for some letters of hieroglyphic.
Ancient Egyptian
Writings Kind
Throughout their more than 3.000 yearlong histories, the Ancient Egyptians used three kinds of writings to write religious and secular texts:
Hieroglyphic writing is the basis of the two other writings. It owes its name to the fact that when the Greeks arrived in Egypt, this writing was mainly used for ‘sacred (Greek hieros) inscriptions (Greek glyph)’ on temple walls or on public monuments. Hieroglyphic writing uses clearly distinguishable pictures to express both sounds and ideas (see examples in right) and was used from the end of the Prehistory until 396 AD, when the last hieroglyphic text was written on the walls of the temple of Isis on the island of Philae.It was used in monumental inscriptions on walls of temples and tombs, but also on furniture, sarcophagi and coffins, and even on papyrus. It could either be inscribed or drawn and often the signs would be painted in many colors. The quality of the writing would vary from highly detailed signs to mere outlines.
Hieratic
writing is as old as hieroglyphic, but it is more cursive and the result
of a quick hand drawing signs on a sheet of papyrus with a reed brush.
While writing, the scribe would often omit several details that made one
sign different from another. The sign
, for instance,
representing an arm and a hand holding something, would be written in the
same way as the sign
, which simply
represents an arm and a hand and normally has an entirely different
meaning. Several smaller signs, written in one quick flow, would melt
together, but despite this, the hieratic text can still be transcribed
into hieroglyphics.
Hieratic was mainly used for religious and secular writings on papyrus or
on linen and during the Greek-Roman era occasionally in an inscription of
a temple wall.
It was called ‘hieratic’ by the Greeks. When Greeks arrived in Egypt,
this writing was almost exclusively used by the Egyptian priests (Greek hieratikos,
‘priestly’). Prior to demotic, it was also used in administrative and
private texts and in stories.
Demotic
writing started being used during the 25th/26th Dynasty. In part, it is a
further evolution from hieratic: like hieratic, demotic was handwriting,
but the strokes of the reed brush or the reed pen are even quicker and
more illegible. Hieratic signs representing a group of hieroglyphs could
be broken up, not as the represent the individual hieroglyphic signs
again, but to facilitate the writing. With these entirely new signs,
unknown in hieroglyphic or hieratic were shaped. The link between
handwriting and hieroglyphic text slowly faded with demotic. Where
hieratic texts often are transcribed into hieroglyphic before translation,
demotic texts are not.
Demotic was mostly used in administrative and private texts, but also in
stories and quite exceptionally in inscriptions.
This name comes from the Greek word demotikos, which mean
‘popular’
Title Goes Here
An
inscription with painted signs
An inscription with very detailed signs "Saqqara"
Title Goes Here
An example of black painted hieroglyphs
An excerpt from Papyrus Berlin 3024 (The conversation of a man with his Ba) in hieratic (right) and transcribed into hieroglyphic (left). It is a common practice among Egyptologists to transcribe hieratic texts into hieroglyphic before translating.
The
hieroglyphic text, written in lines and in columns, from left to right
and from right to left. The red arrows in this example indicate the
orientation
of each text. The text reads:
"Amun-Re, king of the gods, lord
of the thrones of the two lands,
lord of the heaven, the earth, the water and the mountains"
 | Ancient Egypt by Sliem Hassn. |
| Ancient Records of Egypt by James Breasted. |
| A History of the Ancient Egyptians by James Breasted. |
And others.