Egyptian hieroglyphs

"Hieroglyph" redirects here. For other uses, see Hieroglyph (disambiguation).
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphs from the tomb of Seti I (KV17), 13th century BC
Script type
Time period
c. 3250 BC – c. 400 AD
DirectionRight-to-left, left-to-right, boustrophedon
LanguagesEgyptian language
Related scripts
Parent systems
(Proto-writing)
  • Egyptian hieroglyphs
Child systems
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Egyp (050), ​Egyptian hieroglyphs
Unicode
Unicode alias
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs (/ˈhaɪroʊˌɡlɪfs/ HY-roh-glifs)[1][2] were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.[3][4] Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet.[5] Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet, the first widely adopted phonetic writing system. Moreover, owing in large part to the Greek and Aramaic scripts that descended from Phoenician, the majority of the world's living writing systems are descendants of Egyptian hieroglyphs—most prominently the Latin and Cyrillic scripts through Greek, and possibly the Arabic and Brahmic scripts through Aramaic.[not verified in body]

The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age c. the 33rd century BC (Naqada III),[6] with the first decipherable sentence written in the Egyptian language dating to the 28th century BC (Second Dynasty). Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs developed into a mature writing system used for monumental inscription in the classical language of the Middle Kingdom period; during this period, the system used about 900 distinct signs. The use of this writing system continued through the New Kingdom and Late Period, and on into the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman period, extending into the 4th century AD.[7]

During the 5th century, the permanent closing of pagan temples across Roman Egypt ultimately resulted in the ability to read and write hieroglyphs being forgotten. Despite attempts at decipherment, the nature of the script remained unknown throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphic writing was finally accomplished in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, with the help of the Rosetta Stone.[8]

The entire Ancient Egyptian corpus, including both hieroglyphic and hieratic texts, is approximately 5 million words in length; if counting duplicates (such as the Book of the Dead and the Coffin Texts) as separate, this figure is closer to 10 million. The most complete compendium of Ancient Egyptian, the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, contains 1.5–1.7 million words.[9][10]

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2003) [1917], Roach, Peter; Hartmann, James; Setter, Jane (eds.), English Pronouncing Dictionary, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-3-12-539683-8
  2. ^ "hieroglyph". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.
  3. ^ In 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.
  4. ^ The standard inventory of characters used in Egyptology is Gardiner'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). Unicode Egyptian Hieroglyphs as of version 5.2 (2009) assigned 1,070 Unicode characters.
  5. ^ Howard, Michael C. (2012). Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies. p. 23.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Mattessich was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Allen, James P. (2010). Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Cambridge University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-1139486354.
  8. ^ Houston, Stephen; Baines, John; Cooper, Jerrold (July 2003). "Last Writing: Script Obsolescence in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 45 (3). doi:10.1017/s0010417503000227 (inactive 1 November 2024). ISSN 0010-4175. S2CID 145542213.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
  9. ^ 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."
  10. ^ Schenkel, W. (1995). "Die Lexikographie des Altägyptisch-Koptischen". The lexicography of the Ancient Near Eastern languages (PDF) (in German). Verona: Essedue. p. 197. ISBN 88-85697-43-7.