The entire Ancient Egyptiancorpus, including both hieroglyphic and hieratic texts, is approximately 5 million words in length; if counting duplicates (such as theBook of the Dead and theCoffin Texts) as separate, this figure is closer to 10 million. The most complete compendium of Ancient Egyptian, theWörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, contains 1.5–1.7 million words.[9][10]
The wordhieroglyph comes from theGreek adjectiveἱερογλυφικός (hieroglyphikos),[11] acompound ofἱερός (hierós 'sacred')[12] and γλύφω (glýphō '(Ι) carve, engrave'; seeglyph)[13] meaning sacred carving.
The glyphs themselves, since thePtolemaic period, were calledτὰ ἱερογλυφικὰ [γράμματα] (tà hieroglyphikà [grámmata]) "the sacred engraved letters", the Greek counterpart to the Egyptian expression ofmdw.w-nṯr "god's words".[14] Greekἱερόγλυφος meant "a carver of hieroglyphs".[15]
In English,hieroglyph as a noun is recorded from 1590, originally short for nominalizedhieroglyphic (1580s, with a pluralhieroglyphics), from adjectival use (hieroglyphic character).[16][17]
The first full sentence written in mature hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression in the tomb ofSeth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa'ab, which dates from theSecond Dynasty (28th or 27th century BC). Around 800 hieroglyphs are known to date back to theOld Kingdom,Middle Kingdom andNew Kingdom Eras. By theGreco-Roman period, there were more than 5,000.[3]
Scholars have long debated whether hieroglyphs were "original", developed independently of any other script, or derivative. Original scripts are very rare.
Previously, scholars like Geoffrey Sampson argued that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little afterSumerian script, and, probably, [were] invented under the influence of the latter",[23] and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from SumerianMesopotamia".[24][25] Further, Egyptian writing appeared suddenly, while Mesopotamia had a long evolutionary history of the usage of signs—for agricultural and accounting purposes—in tokens dating as early back toc. 8000 BC.
Rosalie David has argued that the debate is moot since "If Egypt did adopt the idea of writing from elsewhere, it was presumably only the concept which was taken over, since the forms of the hieroglyphs are entirely Egyptian in origin and reflect the distinctive flora, fauna and images of Egypt's own landscape."[28] Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar argued further that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols derived from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African" and in "regards to writing, we have seen that a purely Nilotic, hence African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects the reality."[29]
Labels with early inscriptions from the tomb ofMenes (3200–3000 BCE)
Ivory plaque of Menes (3200–3000 BCE)
Ivory plaque of Menes (drawing)
An ivory label withKing Den’s name on it ca. 2985 BCE
Hieroglyphs on stela inLouvre,c. 1321 BCEArtist's scaled drawing of hieroglyphs meaning "life, stability, and dominion." The grid lines allowed the artist to draw the hieroglyphs at whatever scale was needed. ca. 1479–1458 B.C.[30]
Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that function like analphabet;logographs, representingmorphemes; anddeterminatives, which narrow down themeaning of logographic or phonetic words.
As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in thehieratic (priestly) anddemotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use onpapyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. TheRosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek.
Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE), and afterAlexander the Great's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuingPtolemaic andRoman 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 believed that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'trueEgyptians' from some of 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.[citation needed] 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.[7]
By the 4th century CE, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the "myth of allegorical hieroglyphs" was ascendant.[7] Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in 391 by the Roman EmperorTheodosius I; the last known inscription is fromPhilae, known as theGraffito of Esmet-Akhom, from 394.[7][31]
TheHieroglyphica ofHorapollo (c. 5th century) appears to retain some genuine knowledge about the writing system. It offers an explanation of close to 200 signs.Some are identified correctly, such as the "goose" hieroglyph (zꜣ) representing the word for "son".[7]
A half-dozen Demotic glyphs are still in use, added to the Greek alphabet when writingCoptic.
Ibn Wahshiyya's attempt at a translation of a hieroglyphic text
Knowledge of the hieroglyphs had been lost completely in the medieval period. Early attempts at decipherment were made by some such asDhul-Nun al-Misri andIbn Wahshiyya (9th and 10th century, respectively).[32]
All medieval and early modern attempts were hampered by the fundamental assumption that hieroglyphs recorded ideas and not the sounds of the language. As no bilingual texts were available, any such symbolic 'translation' could be proposed without the possibility of verification.[33] It was not untilAthanasius Kircher in the mid 17th century that scholars began to think the hieroglyphs might also represent sounds. Kircher was familiar with Coptic, and thought that it might be the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs, but was held back by a belief in the mystical nature of the symbols.[7]
The breakthrough in decipherment came only with the discovery of theRosetta Stone byNapoleon's troops in 1799 (duringNapoleon's Egyptian invasion). As the stone presented a hieroglyphic and a demotic version of the same text in parallel with a Greek translation, plenty of material for falsifiable studies in translation was suddenly available. In the early 19th century, scholars such asSilvestre de Sacy,Johan David Åkerblad, andThomas Young studied the inscriptions on the stone, and were able to make some headway. Finally,Jean-François Champollion made the complete decipherment by the 1820s. In hisLettre à M. Dacier (1822), he wrote:
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.[34]
Illustration fromTabula Aegyptiaca hieroglyphicis exornata published inActa Eruditorum, 1714
Visually, hieroglyphs are all more or less figurative: they represent real or abstract elements, sometimes stylized and simplified, but all generally perfectly recognizable in form. However, the same sign can, according to context, be interpreted in diverse ways: as a phonogram (phonetic reading), as alogogram, or as anideogram (semagram; "determinative") (semantic reading). The determinative was not read as a phonetic constituent, but facilitated understanding by differentiating the word from its homophones.
Most non-determinative hieroglyphic signs arephonograms, whose meaning is determined by pronunciation, independent of visual characteristics. This follows therebus principle where, for example, the picture of an eye could stand not only for the English wordeye, but also for its phonetic equivalent, the first person pronounI.
Phonograms formed with one consonant are calleduniliteral signs; with two consonants,biliteral signs; with three,triliteral signs.
Twenty-four uniliteral signs make up the so-called hieroglyphic alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing does not normally indicate vowels, unlikecuneiform, and for that reason has been labelled by some as anabjad, i.e., an alphabet without vowels.
Thus, hieroglyphic writing representing apintail duck is read in Egyptian assꜣ, derived from the main consonants of the Egyptian word for this duck: 's', 'ꜣ' and 't'. (Note that ꜣ or, two half-rings opening to the left, sometimes replaced by the digit '3', is the Egyptianalef.)
It is also possible to use the hieroglyph of the pintail duck without a link to its meaning in order to represent the twophonemess andꜣ, independently of any vowels that could accompany these consonants, and in this way write the word:sꜣ, "son"; or when complemented by other signs detailed below[clarification needed]sꜣ, "keep, watch"; andsꜣṯ.w, "hard ground". For example:
– the characterssꜣ;
– the same character used only in order to signify, according to the context, "pintail duck" or, with the appropriate determinative, "son", two words having the same or similar consonants; the meaning of the little vertical stroke will be explained further on under Logograms:
As in theArabic script, not all vowels were written in Egyptian hieroglyphs; it is debatable whether vowels were written at all. Possibly, as with Arabic, the semivowels/w/ and/j/ (as in English W and Y) could double as the vowels/u/ and/i/. In modern transcriptions, ane is added between consonants to aid in their pronunciation. For example,nfr "good" is typically writtennefer. This does not reflect Egyptian vowels, which are obscure, but is merely a modern convention. Likewise, theꜣ andꜥ are commonly transliterated asa, as inRa (rꜥ).
Hieroglyphs are inscribed in rows of pictures arranged in horizontal lines or vertical columns.[35] Both hieroglyph lines as well as signs contained in the lines are read with upper content having precedence over content below.[35] The lines or columns, and the individual inscriptions within them, read from left to right in rare instances only and for particular reasons at that; ordinarily however, they read from right to left–the Egyptians' preferred direction of writing (although, for convenience, modern texts are often normalized into left-to-right order).[35] The direction toward which asymmetrical hieroglyphs face indicate their proper reading order. For example, when human and animal hieroglyphs face or look toward the left, they almost always must be read from left to right, and vice versa.
As in many ancient writing systems, words are not separated by blanks or punctuation marks. However, certain hieroglyphs appear particularly common only at the end of words, making it possible to readily distinguish words.
The Egyptian hieroglyphic script contained 24 uniliterals (symbols that stood for single consonants, much like letters in English). It would have been possible to write all Egyptian words in the manner of these signs, but the Egyptians never did so and never simplified their complex writing into a true alphabet.[36]
Each uniliteral glyph once had a unique reading, but several of these fell together asOld Egyptian developed intoMiddle Egyptian. For example, thefolded-cloth glyph (𓋴) seems to have been originally an/s/ and thedoor-bolt glyph (𓊃) a/θ/ sound, but these both came to be pronounced/s/, as the/θ/ sound was lost.[clarification needed] A few uniliterals first appear in Middle Egyptian texts.
Besides the uniliteral glyphs, there are also thebiliteral andtriliteral signs, to represent a specific sequence of two or three consonants, consonants and vowels, and a few as vowel combinations only, in the language.
Egyptian writing is often redundant: in fact, it happens very frequently that a word is followed by several characters writing the same sounds, in order to guide the reader. For example, the wordnfr, "beautiful, good, perfect", was written with a unique triliteral that was read asnfr:
However, it is considerably more common to add to that triliteral, the uniliterals forf andr. The word can thus be written asnfr+f+r, but one still reads it as merelynfr. The two alphabetic characters are adding clarity to the spelling of the preceding triliteral hieroglyph.
Redundant characters accompanying biliteral or triliteral signs are calledphonetic complements (or complementaries). They can be placed in front of the sign (rarely), after the sign (as a general rule), or even framing it (appearing both before and after). Ancient Egyptian scribes consistently avoided leaving large areas of blank space in their writing and might add additional phonetic complements or sometimes even invert the order of signs if this would result in a more aesthetically pleasing appearance (good scribes attended to the artistic, and even religious, aspects of the hieroglyphs, and would not simply view them as a communication tool). Various examples of the use of phonetic complements can be seen below:
–md +d +w (the complementaryd is placed after the sign) → it readsmdw, meaning "tongue".
–ḫ +p +ḫpr +r +j (the four complementaries frame the triliteral sign of thescarab beetle) → it readsḫpr.j, meaning the name "Khepri", with the final glyph being the determinative for 'ruler or god'.
Notably, phonetic complements were also used to allow the reader to differentiate between signs that arehomophones, or which do not always have a unique reading. For example, the symbol of "the seat" (or chair):
– This can be readst,ws orḥtm, according to the word in which it is found. The presence of phonetic complements—and of the suitable determinative—allows the reader to know which of the three readings to choose:
1st Reading:st –
–st, writtenst+t; the last character is the determinative of "the house" or that which is found there, meaning "seat, throne, place";
–st (writtenst+t; the "egg" determinative is used for female personal names in some periods), meaning "Isis";
2nd Reading:ws –
–wsjr (writtenws+jr, with, as a phonetic complement, "the eye", which is readjr, following the determinative of "god"), meaning "Osiris";
3rd Reading:ḥtm –
–ḥtm.t (writtenḥ+ḥtm+m+t, with the determinative of "Anubis" or "the jackal"), meaning a kind of wild animal;
–ḥtm (writtenḥ +ḥtm +t, with the determinative of the flying bird), meaning "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 adjectivebnj, "sweet", becamebnr. In Middle Egyptian, one can write:
–bnrj (writtenb+n+r+i, with determinative)
which is fully read asbnr, thej not being pronounced but retained in order to keep a written connection with the ancient word (in the same fashion as theEnglish language wordsthrough,knife, orvictuals, which are no longer pronounced the way they are written.)
Comparative evolution from pictograms to abstract shapes, in cuneiform, Egyptian and Chinese characters
Besides a phonetic interpretation, characters can also be read for their meaning: in this instance,logograms are being spoken (orideograms) andsemagrams (the latter are also called determinatives).[clarification needed][37]
A hieroglyph used as alogogram 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:
–rꜥ, meaning "sun";
–pr, meaning "house";
–swt (sw+t), meaning "reed";
–ḏw, meaning "mountain".
In some cases, the semantic connection is indirect (metonymic ormetaphoric):
–nṯr, meaning "god"; the character in fact represents a temple flag (standard);
–bꜣ, meaning "Bâ" (soul); the character is the traditional representation of a "bâ" (a bird with a human head);
–dšr, meaning "flamingo"; the corresponding phonogram means "red" and the bird is associated bymetonymy with this color.
Determinatives or semagrams (semantic symbols specifying meaning) are placed at the end of a word. These mute characters serve to clarify what the word is about, ashomophonic glyphs are common. If a similar procedure existed in English, words with the same spelling would be followed by an indicator that would not be read, but which would fine-tune the meaning: "retort [chemistry]" and "retort [rhetoric]" would thus be distinguished.
A number of determinatives exist: divinities, humans, parts of the human body, animals, plants, etc. Certain determinatives possess aliteral and a figurative meaning. For example, a roll of papyrus,
is used to define "books" but also abstract ideas. The determinative of theplural is a shortcut to signal three occurrences of the word, that is to say, its plural (since the Egyptian language had a dual, sometimes indicated by two strokes). This special character is explained below.
Here, are several examples of the use of determinatives borrowed from the book,Je lis les hiéroglyphes ("I am reading hieroglyphs") 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 ayoung-person determinative symbol:
– which is the determinative indicating babies and children;
–nfr.t (.t is here the suffix that forms the feminine): meaning "the nubile young woman", with
as the determinative indicating a woman;
–nfrw (the tripling of the character serving to express the plural,flexional endingw) : meaning "foundations (of a house)", with the house as a determinative,
;
–nfr : meaning "clothing" with
as the determinative for lengths of cloth;
–nfr : meaning "wine" or "beer"; with a jug
as the determinative.
All these words have a meliorative connotation: "good, beautiful, perfect".[citation needed] TheConcise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian by Raymond A. Faulkner, gives some twenty words that are readnfr or which are formed from this word.
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.
Standardorthography—"correct" spelling—in Egyptian is much looser than in modern languages. In fact, one or several variants exist for almost every word. One finds:
Redundancies;
Omission ofgraphemes, which are ignored whether or not they are intentional;
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, which are much more problematic when the writing is cursive (hieratic) writing, but especially demotic, where the schematization of the signs is extreme.
However, many of these apparent spelling errors constitute an issue of chronology. Spelling and standards varied over time, so the writing of a word during theOld Kingdom might be considerably different during theNew Kingdom. Furthermore, the Egyptians were perfectly content to include older orthography ("historical spelling") alongside newer practices, as though it were acceptable in English to use archaic spellings in modern texts. Most often, ancient "spelling errors" are simply misinterpretations of context.[citation needed] Today, hieroglyphists use numerous cataloguing systems (notably theManuel de Codage andGardiner's Sign List) to clarify the presence of determinatives, ideograms, and other ambiguous signs in transliteration.
The glyphs in thiscartouche are transliterated as:
p t
"ua"
l m
y (ii) s
Ptolmys
thoughii is considered a single letter and transliteratedy.
Another way in which hieroglyphs work is illustrated by the two Egyptian words pronouncedpr (usually vocalised asper). One word is 'house', and its hieroglyphic representation is straightforward:
Here, the 'house' hieroglyph works as a 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 wordpr is the verb 'to go out, leave'. When this word is written, the 'house' hieroglyph is used as a phonetic symbol:
Here, the 'house' glyph stands for the consonantspr. The 'mouth' glyph below it is aphonetic complement: it is read asr, reinforcing the phonetic reading ofpr. The third hieroglyph is adeterminative: it is anideogram for verbs of motion that gives the reader an idea of the meaning of the word.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were added to theUnicode Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2 which introduced theEgyptian Hieroglyphs block (U+13000–U+1342F).
As of July 2013[update], four fonts,Aegyptus,NewGardiner,Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs andJSeshFont support this range. Another font,Segoe UI Historic, comes bundled with Windows 10 and also contains glyphs for the Egyptian Hieroglyphs block. Segoe UI Historic excludes three glyphs depictingphallus (Gardiner'sD52, D52A D53, Unicode code points U+130B8–U+130BA).[39]
TheEgyptian Hieroglyphs Extended-A Unicode block is U+13460-U+143FF. It was added to the Unicode Standard in September 2024 with the release of version 16.0:
TheEgyptian Hieroglyph Format Controls Unicode block is U+13430-U+1345F. It was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2019 with the release of version 12.0:
^abIn total, there were about 1,000 graphemes in use during the Old Kingdom period; this number decreased to 750–850 during the Middle Kingdom, but rose instead to around 5,000 signs during the Ptolemaic period. Antonio Loprieno,Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 12.
^The standard inventory of characters used in Egyptology isGardiner's sign list (1928–1953). A.H. Gardiner (1928),Catalogue of the Egyptian hieroglyphic printing type, from matrices owned and controlled by Dr. Alan Gardiner, "Additions to the new hieroglyphic fount (1928)", in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 15 (1929), p. 95; "Additions to the new hieroglyphic fount (1931)", in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 17 (1931), pp. 245–247; A.H. Gardiner, "Supplement to the catalogue of the Egyptian hieroglyphic printing type, showing acquisitions to December 1953" (1953). UnicodeEgyptian Hieroglyphs as of version 5.2 (2009) assigned 1,070 Unicode characters.
^Peust, Carsten, "Über ägyptische Lexikographie. 1: Zum Ptolemaic Lexikon von Penelope Wilson; 2: Versuch eines quantitativen Vergleichs der Textkorpora antiker Sprachen", in Lingua Aegyptia 7, 2000: p. 246:"Nach einer von W. F. Reineke in S. Grunert & L Hafemann (Hrsgg.), Textcorpus und Wörterbuch (Problemeder Ägyptologie 14), Leiden 1999, S.xiii veröffentlichten Schätzung W. Schenkels beträgt die Zahl der in allen heute bekannten ägyptischen (d.h. hieroglyphischen und hieratischen) Texten enthaltenen Wortformen annähernd 5 Millio nen und tendiert, wenn man die Fälle von Mehrfachüberlieferung u.a. des Toten buchs und der Sargtexte separat zählt, gegen 10 Millionen; das Berliner Zettelarchiv des Wörterbuchs der ägyptischen Sprache von A. Erman & H. Grapow (Wb), das sei nerzeit Vollständigkeit anstrebte, umfasst "nur" 1,7 Millionen (nach anderen Angaben: 1,5 Millionen) Zettel."
^ab"The seal impressions, from various tombs, date even further back, to 3400 B.C. These dates challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia."Mitchell, Larkin."Earliest Egyptian Glyphs".Archaeology. Archaeological Institute of America. Retrieved29 February 2012.
^Ancient Civilizations of Africa Vol 2 (Unesco General History of Africa (abridged)) (Abridged ed.). London [England]: J. Currey. 1990. pp. 11–12.ISBN0852550928.
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