An Explanation of Hieroglyphics
Egyptian pedagogical traditions
To understand hieroglyphic writing, one must know about its
tradition within
The mistakes in hearing made by pupils in the writing schools have helped scholars to understand the phonetic changes that occurred in the development of the Egyptian language. When the pupil who was learning to write the hieroglyphic script did not recognize a word dictated to him, he wrote it badly--that is, just as he heard it. Because he had not yet learned to spell in the orthodox manner, what appeared on his papyrus was usually a word that sounded similar to the dictated but misunderstood term and whose word picture was familiar. Thus, although Egyptian writing was originally composed of symbols that represented a phonetic value, the system was transmitted in the form of word pictures--that is, closed or indivisible groups, generally of several signs per word.
Cryptographic hieroglyphic writing
That knowledge of the hieroglyphic system and the
principles upon which it was devised had not become lost is attested by two
phenomena: cryptography and the development of the hieroglyphic writing during
the last millennium of its existence. From the middle of the 3rd millennium but
more frequently in the
Growth of hieroglyphic writing during
the 1st millennium BC
At about the middle of the 1st millennium BC, Egyptian
writing experienced new developments and a revival of interest. Again the
inscriptions abounded with new signs and sign groups unknown in the classical
period, all generated according to the same principles as the classical Egyptian
script and the cryptographic texts. The writing of this late period was
distinguished from the cryptograms in that this script, like every normal system
of writing, developed a fixed tradition, being intended not to conceal but to be
read easily, whereas the cryptography strove for originality.
The development of hieroglyphic writing thus proceeded
approximately as follows: at first only the absolutely necessary symbols were
invented, without a canonization of their artistic form. In a second stage,
easier readability (i.e., increased rapidity of reading) was achieved by
increasing the number of signs (thereby eliminating some doubts) and by
employing determinatives. Finally, after the second stage had endured,
essentially unaltered, for about 2,000 years, the number of symbols increased to
several thousand in about 500 BC. This rampant growth process occurred through
the application of hitherto unused possibilities of the system. With the triumph
of Christianity, the knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was extinguished along
with the ancient Egyptian religion.
Tools
The tools used by the craftsmen for writing hieroglyphic
symbols consisted of chisels and hammers for stone inscriptions and brushes and colors
for wood and other smooth surfaces. Only for the cursive scripts, hieratic and
demotic, were special materials developed. Leather and papyrus became writing
surfaces, and the stems of rushes in lengths of six to 13 inches (15 to 33 centimeters),
cut obliquely at the writing end and chewed to separate the fibers into a brush like
tip, functioned as writing implements. The split calamus reed was introduced
into
Hieratic script
The Egyptian cursive script, called hieratic writing,
received its name from the Greek hieratikos ("priestly") at a time
when the script was used only for sacred texts. Everyday secular documents were
written in another style, the demotic (Greek demotikos, "for the
people" or "in common use") script.
The structure of the hieratic script corresponds with that
of hieroglyphic writing. Changes occurred in the characters of hieratic simply
because they could be written rapidly with brush or rush and ink on papyrus. In
general, the picture form is not, or not easily, recognizable. Because their
models were well known and in current use throughout Egyptian history, the
hieratic symbols never strayed too far from them. Nevertheless, the system
differs from the hieroglyphic script in some important respects:
1. Hieratic was written in one direction only, from right
to left. In earlier times the lines had run vertically and later, about 2000 BC,
horizontally. Subsequently the papyrus scrolls were written in columns of
changing widths.
2. There were ligatures in hieratic so that two, but no
more than two, signs could be written in one stroke.
3. As a consequence of its decreased legibility, the
spelling of the hieratic script was more rigid than that of hieroglyphic
writing. Variations from uniformity at a given time were minor; but, during the
course of the various periods, the spelling developed and changed. As a result,
hieratic texts do not correspond exactly to contemporary hieroglyphic texts,
either in the placing of signs or in the spelling of words.
4. Hieratic used diacritical additions to distinguish
between two signs that had grown similar to one another because of cursive
writing. For example, the cow's leg received a supplementary distinguishing
cross, because in hieratic it had come to resemble the sign for the leg of a
man. Certain hieratic signs were taken into the hieroglyphic script.
All commonplace documents--e.g.., letters, catalogs, and
official writs--were written in hieratic script, as were literary and religious
texts. In the life of the Egyptians, hieratic script played a larger role than
hieroglyphic writing and was also taught earlier in the schools. In offices,
hieratic was replaced by demotic in the 7th century BC, but it remained in
fashion until much later for religious texts of all sorts. The latest hieratic
texts stem from the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd century
AD.
Demotic script
Demotic script is first encountered at the beginning of the
26th dynasty, in about 660 BC. The writing signs plainly demonstrate its
connection with the hieratic script, although the exact relationship is not yet
clear. The demotic characters are more cursive (flowing and joined) and thus
more similar to one another, with the result that they are more difficult to
read than are the hieratic forms. Countering this difficulty, there is less
freedom for the writer's individual variations. It appears that demotic was
originally developed expressly for government office use--that is, for documents
in which the language was extensively formalized and thus well suited for the
use of a standardized cursive script. Only some time after its introduction was
it used for literary texts in addition to documents and letters; much later it
was employed for religious texts also. The latest dated demotic text, from
The demotic system corresponds to the hieratic and hence
also to the hieroglyphic system. Alongside the traditional spelling, however,
there was another spelling that took account of the markedly altered phonetic
form of the words by appropriate respelling. This characteristic applied
especially to a large number of words that did not occur in the older language
and for which no written form had consequently been passed down. The
nontraditional spelling could also be used for old, familiar words.
Decipherment of hieroglyphic writing
With the possible exception of Pythagoras, no Greek
understood the nature of hieroglyphic writing. The Greeks did not obtain
guidance from their Egyptian contemporaries, some of whom even lived on Italian
soil and wrote proper hieroglyphic inscriptions on Roman obelisks. Rather, the
Greek tradition taught that hieroglyphs were symbolic signs or allegories. The
Egyptian-born Greek philosopher Plotinus interpreted hieroglyphic writing
entirely from the viewpoint of his esoteric philosophy. Only one of the numerous
works on the hieroglyphic script written in late antiquity has been preserved:
the Hieroglyphica of Horapollon, a Greek Egyptian who probably lived in the 5th
century AD. Horapollon made use of a good source, but he himself certainly could
not read hieroglyphic writing and began with the false hypothesis of the Greek
tradition, namely, that hieroglyphs were symbols and allegories, not phonetic
signs.
The Middle Ages neither possessed any knowledge of
hieroglyphic writing nor took any interest in it. But a manuscript of Horapollon
brought to
Kircher's attempts at decipherment
The great German scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602-80) began
his attempts at decipherment with the Coptic language and with the correct
hypothesis that the hieroglyphs recorded an earlier stage of this language. He
also believed, again correctly, that the signs recorded phonetic values. In
spite of this, he did not arrive at correct results--with the exception of a
single character. This failure can be attributed not only to Kircher's erroneous
assumption that the hieroglyphs must correspond phonetically to an alphabet but
primarily to the fact that he was most interested in the Renaissance conception
of a supposed symbolic meaning constituting the deeper significance of
hieroglyphs. In his view, the phonetic value of the hieroglyphs was merely the
commonplace, superficial part of the sign.
Discovery of the Rosetta Stone
Both the intellectual and the physical prerequisites for
the deciphering of the hieroglyphic script first presented themselves at the end
of the 18th century. By accident, a stone that exhibited three different
scripts--hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek--was discovered by members of
Napoleon's expedition to
Champollion's decipherment
This task of complete decipherment was first accomplished
by the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) in 1822, after long
years of intensive work and many setbacks. His success was due to the
recognition that hieroglyphic writing, exactly like the hieratic and demotic
scripts derived from it, did not constitute a writing system of symbols but
rather a phonetic script. He arrived at this breakthrough by an exact comparison
of the three Egyptian forms of writing, as well as by reference to Coptic, the
late phase of the Egyptian language that was written with the Greek alphabet and
was thus directly readable. The Coptic language was also understood at that
time. Starting, as had his predecessors, from Ptolemy and Cleopatra, both
ring-enclosed royal names, and adding the hieroglyphic spelling of Ramses' name,
Champollion determined, essentially correctly, the phonetic values of the signs.
Soon after, he also learned to read and translate a large number of Egyptian
words. Since then, precise research has confirmed and refined Champollion's
approach and most of his results.
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