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Hieroglyphics were mastered in its time by many people. Of whom which many were not scholars of their day. Even though the Old and Middle Kingdoms a reported to have only 700 signs, those signs had multiple meanings. But these meanings are always associated within the context that surrounds them. Many of the parchments that we read to help us learn hieroglyphics today are from writing assignments given to the professional scribes of Ancient Egypt.

There were no spelling rules in Egyptian. For them the aesthetics (arrangement) of the writings was the important factor. The Egyptians always tried to group the signs in balanced rectangles. And, it was considered impolite for a sign to turn its back on the reader. To achieve this end, scribes would sometimes reverse the order of the signs to accomplish this goal. The results, many words could have mutilple representations as well!

The script itself evolved over time. As history took its course, new hieroglyphic signs were added to the language. As such, the number of hieroglyphs evolved from about 700 in the Old Kingdom to over 6000 in the Ptolemaic period.

The basic hieroglyphic image set used by Egyptologist today contains over 4700 signs or images. They can be found in a catalog called Hieroglyphica. This particular book divides them into 26 categories. A few other reference books are:

Aspects of the Script

Orientation of the Signs

The hieroglyphic script is extremely flexible, and was written both in rows (horizontally) and columns (vertically). Furthermore, the direction of the signs could change, that is, the texts could be written from left-to-right, as well as from right-to-left.

To find the direction and the beginning of a text, there are some very simple rules:

The Arrangement of Signs

The aesthetic look of the text formed an important criteria for the placement of the signs with respect to each other. The Ancient Egyptians attempted to eliminate empty spaces in the text as much as possible (horror vacui). To this end, they divided the text lines in squares, in which the signs were arranged. As an example, the word for beautiful would never be written as in (a) below, but instead as demonstrated in (b) with a nicely filled square.

The Egyptian Signs

The hieroglyphs can be divided into two categories: signs with a pictorial value (ideograms) and signs with a phonetic value (phonograms).

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To facilitate the search in dictionaries and to make it possible to easily read Egyptian texts, the hieroglyphic signs are usually converted to our own alphabet (transcription). The lack of vowels however makes it difficult to speak the language. To circumvent this problem, the following rules are used:

With this system one arrives at words that are connected by vowels. Take the word for beautiful as an example: its transcription of the hieroglyphic signs is nfr. To ease the pronunciation of these three consonants, we bind them together with e-sounds, which leads to nefer.

Obviously, our pronunciation bears no relation with the original pronunciation of the Egyptian language. It is solely a convention, to facilitate communication among us modern people (special acknowledgements for this info).

After reviewing information about Egyptian original script, the Rosetta Stone and the sections in the Book Hieroglyphica, please take sometime Looking at Other Sites that are on the web.

For the intrepid, there are many courses on-line for The Egyptian Language and its Script(s), and offline Introduction to Egyptian Hieroglyphs (MAC).

Parallel to the changes in the language there were changes in the script. The Egyptian original script (Hieroglyphic) was time consuming because it required elaborate drawings. Over the centuries, its use became limited to tomb decoration and expensive artwork. A simplified version of the Hieroglyphic script, invented and used by the Priests and authorities, was called the "Heratic" script. The priests duties included writing down marriage documents, selling and buying documents,...etc. They used the Heratic script for that purpose.

For the purpose of exchanging written texts among people, a more simplified version of the script—called the Demotic script—was derived and used during the intermediate Kingdom. The Demotic script was introduced about the same time the New Egyptian (colloquial) language started to be used for writing.

The latest Hieroglyphic script dates back to about 450 A.D. at the island of "Anas AlWegood", where Idols were still worshipped at this place till this time. The New Egyptian language is also known as the "Demotic" language since it is the colloquial Egyptian spoken by the people. The gradual replacement of Hieroglyphic by Demotic is similar to the replacement of Latin by English French, Italian, etc.

At about 200 BC, Greek was understood in places like Alexandria due to the influence of the Greek culture and religion. In fact many Greek words entered the Egyptian (Coptic) language at that time. The Egyptians adopted a phonetic Greek alphabet for their language since about 200 BC, forming a 32 alphabet for the Coptic language.

It should be noted that the words "Hieroglyphic/Heratic/Demotic" are scientific names and are not the names of the scripts themselves as used by the Egyptians.

Hieroglyphic

Hieroglyphs or picture writing of the Ancient Egyptians comes from the writings on the walls of their tombs and in their art. The tomb writing tells about the individual who died, their accomplishments, where and how they lived. Hieroglyphs are found on the Ancient Egyptian art, sculpture and architecture. This picture writing was a mystery for hundreds of years until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which helped unlock the language mystery.

Hieroglyphic writing was the first attempt at scripting and is touted as the oldest written language of mankind. It was a recognizable form that represented a person, an object, or an idea. They were eventually used in combination with different signs to spell out the words of the spoken Egyptian language. However, the hieroglyphic indicates consonants only. Hieroglyphic was used for formal inscriptions, and mainly found on stone, pottery, and ivory.

Heratic

Hieratic(up to about 650BC) was a more simplified style of writing hieroglyphic. It was adapted from hieroglyphic script for a quicker record of non-monumental context. The early hieratic has a more fluent form than hieroglyphs, and the individual signs had become more abbreviated by the time of Old Kingdom. Hieratic was the script for administration and business use. It was used to record literature, scientific and religious documents. The hieratic inscriptions were usually written in black ink with a brush made of reed.

Demotic

Demotic (about 650BC-about AD450) is another more simplified script generally used for daily purposes. The script form of demotic is an almost independent form that is distinct from hieratic. It is a very cursive script with no icon or pictures. The writing tradition of demotic was maintained in horizontal lines and written from right to left. The Demotic language is of interest to researchers because it was also used as letters for vocals. Originally, only the consonants were used in old Egyptian languages.

At about the beginning of the Christian period, the old scripts were finally declined and disappeared.

Coptic

Coptic which came in use in the 3rd century AD, the language spoken by the Egyptian Christians, took the place of demotic, and became the final phase of the Egyptian language. The Coptic script consists of the 24 letters from the Greek and different Semitic languages with each of the letters representing a single sound, and was completed with 6 signs from Demotic to indicate Egyptian sounds that had no correspondence in Greek. Coptic had become a fully alphabetic script that represented both vowels and consonants. Older versions of the language only notate a consonantal skeleton (analogous to Arabic languages). In the 10th century AD the Coptic language was replaced by the Arabic.

 

Rosetta Stone

More is known about life in Ancient Egypt than other ancient civilizations. This knowledge comes from the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone was the key that unlocked the mysteries of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The Rosetta Stone is a slab of compact black basalt (114x72x28 cm) that was found in July of 1799 in the small Egyptian village Rosette (Raschid), which is located in the western delta of the Nile. It contains three inscriptions that represent a single decree of the priests of Memphis in honor of Ptolemaios V. (196 b.c.). The inscription is written in three languages: Egyptian Hieroglyphic (script of the official and religious texts), Egyptian Demotic (everyday Egyptian script) and Greek. The stone contains 14 lines of hieroglyphs, 32 lines of cursive demotic, and 54 lines of Greek. The 14 lines of hieroglyphs are only partial, and correspond to the last 28 lines of Greek, which are also damaged. The first 14 lines of demotic are damaged at the beginnings. The last 26 lines of Greek are damaged at the ends.

Thomas Young, a British physicist, and Jean Francois Champollion, a French Egyptologist, collaborated to decipher the hieroglyphic and demotic texts by comparing them with the known Greek text in 1822. Furthermore, with the aid of the Coptic language (language of the Christian descendants of Ancient Egyptians), they succeeded to realize the phonetic value of the hieroglyphs. This proved the fact that hieroglyphs, in addition to having symbolic meaning, also served as a "spoken language". From this meager starting point a generation of Egyptologists eventually managed to read almost everything that remains of the Egyptians' ancient writings.

Napoleonic soldiers found the Rosetta Stone in July of 1799 near the seaside town of Rosetta in lower Egypt, and because Egyptologists were familiar with Greek were able to decipher the message and decode the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Today, the Rosetta Stone is part of the British Museum collection and has been housed there since 1802.

Rosetta Stone Links