Hieroglyphs

I

Introduction

Hieroglyphs, characters in any of several systems of writing in which the characters are pictorial, that is, represent recognizable objects. The term hieroglyph is, however, most generally associated with the script in which the ancient Egyptian language was written; the ancient Greeks applied the term (meaning “sacred carving”) to the decorative characters carved on Egyptian standing monuments. The word hieroglyphic was later used to describe the pictorial writing systems of the Hittites, Cretans, and Maya, but their systems are in no way related to one another or to the Egyptian, having in common only that they are pictorial.

II

Ideograms and Phonograms

Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions are composed of two basic types of signs: ideograms and phonograms. Ideograms signify either the specific object drawn or something closely related to it; for example, a picture of the Sun may mean “Sun” or “day”; phonograms, or sound signs, were used purely for their phonetic value and have no relationship to the word they are used to spell. The development of the rebus principle, by which the picture of an object could stand not only for that object but also for a word with the same sound but a different meaning, made possible the writing of proper nouns, abstract ideas, and grammatical elements. Phonograms could represent one consonant or the combination of two or three consonants in a specific order; vowels were not written. A sign might serve as an ideogram in one word and as a phonogram in another. Most words were written with a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs; a picture of the floor plan of a house meant “house”, but the same sign followed by a phonetic complement and a picture of a pair of walking legs was used to write the homophonous verb meaning “to go out”. Ideograms written at the end of a word, indicating the category to which the word belongs and thus signifying the meaning intended (which was not always clear from the context), are called determinatives. A representation of a papyrus scroll, used as a determinative, indicates that an abstract meaning was intended.

III

Arrangement of Hieroglyphic Inscriptions

Hieroglyphic inscriptions could be written either vertically or horizontally, usually from right to left. The direction for any given inscription is indicated by the individual signs, which normally face the beginning of the inscription. The inscriptions are composed of nouns, verbs, prepositions, and other parts of speech organized by strict rules of word order. The signs spelling individual words were arranged in groups, and blank spaces were avoided in an inscription. Words referring to the king and gods were often honorifically transposed, that is, moved forward in writing. The king's two most common names were inscribed in cartouches or “royal rings”, stylized representations of loops formed by a double thickness of rope with the ends tied at the bottom.

IV

Development of Cursive Forms

The Egyptians continued to use hieroglyphs from the time of the development of the system, about 3000 bc, until the time of the Roman Empire; the latest hieroglyphic inscription dates from ad 394. The form and number of signs remained fairly consistent until the Graeco-Roman period (after 332 bc), when the number of signs, especially phonograms, was greatly increased. But even by the beginning of the Old Kingdom (c. 2755 bc) the Egyptians had developed a more cursive script that replaced hieroglyphs for the enormous bulk of writing done with blunt reed pens and ink on papyrus. This script is called hieratic (Greek, “priestly”), so named by the Greeks because by about the 7th century bc it was largely limited to religious texts. For all other types of texts an even more cursive and ligatured script called demotic (Greek, “popular”) was used. Although the hieroglyphic script was much more time-consuming to write than either hieratic or demotic, it continued in use for monumental carved inscriptions. Precisely because it was pictorial, the Egyptians used it as part of the decoration of the monuments.