Hieroglyphs letters are pictographic markings that the ancient Egyptians used as composed language. Hieroglyphs were typically didst in vertical columns and horizontal rows that are commonly read from right to left. Reading hieroglyphs proved impossible for modern archaeologists until nineteenth-century French linguist and historian Jean-François Champollion made that, in addition to been the objective pictured, a hieroglyph could present a sound made while naming such an object. Complicating matters, one hieroglyph might be practiced in more than one way. For example, a disk symbolisation might symbolise not just an objective, the sun, but a conception, the sun god, and a sound "ra".
The first hieroglyphs appeared on mud seals used to mark 1st dynasty tombs with their owners’ names, but before long hieroglyphs were appearing elsewhere as well. Hieroglyphic texts could be painted on rock, stucco, wood, metal, or other surfaces, but they were most often entered on stelae and tomb and temple walls. In fact, they were so strongly linked with these religious constructions that the Greeks named them hieros glypho, or “sacred carved,” from which the popular word hieroglyph is deducted. (The ancient Egyptian phrase for hieroglyphics was medw netjer, or “the gods’ words.”) Hieroglyphs might likewise be marked on papyri, but more typically a inscribed form of hieroglyphs, known as hieratic script or hieratics, was practiced for such documents.
Bibliography:
The first hieroglyphs appeared on mud seals used to mark 1st dynasty tombs with their owners’ names, but before long hieroglyphs were appearing elsewhere as well. Hieroglyphic texts could be painted on rock, stucco, wood, metal, or other surfaces, but they were most often entered on stelae and tomb and temple walls. In fact, they were so strongly linked with these religious constructions that the Greeks named them hieros glypho, or “sacred carved,” from which the popular word hieroglyph is deducted. (The ancient Egyptian phrase for hieroglyphics was medw netjer, or “the gods’ words.”) Hieroglyphs might likewise be marked on papyri, but more typically a inscribed form of hieroglyphs, known as hieratic script or hieratics, was practiced for such documents.
Bibliography:
- Wallis Budge (E. A.), First Steps in Egyptian, a Book for Beginners, London, 1895
- Gardiner (A.), Egyptian Grammar, being an introduction to the study of hieroglyphs, Oxford, 1957