We explain what hieroglyphs are, their differences from alphabetic writing and their evolution. Also, Egyptian hieroglyphs.
What are hieroglyphs?
Hieroglyphs are signs that make up a writing system used by some ancient societies. The signs were recognizable figures of nature but could have ideographic value (they represented the object they illustrated) or phonetic value (they represented a sound that, together with another sound, formed another word).
The meaning of the hieroglyphs was interpreted in their context. That is, each hieroglyph could mean one thing or another depending on the hieroglyphs that surrounded it. Therefore, it was about a very complex writing system that only specialists mastered (called “scribes”).
Hieroglyph and cuneiform were the two oldest writing systems in history and were both invented between 3300 and 3200 BC. c. The most famous hieroglyphic writing system is the one used in Ancient Egypt and it is estimated that it was used until the 5th century AD. C., in parallel with other simpler writing systems.
In addition to the ancient Egyptian society, there were other societies in human history that developed hieroglyphic writing systems. However, most of them could not be deciphered.
The Cretan hieroglyph was a writing system that was used on the island of Crete between 1900 and 1600 BC. C. It has more than three thousand signs and specialists believe that it was a syllabic system (that is, it divided the representation of words into syllables), but the system could not yet be deciphered.
On many occasions, Mayan writing is considered a hieroglyphic system, because that is how some specialists identified it during the 19th century. However, today specialists describe their writing as a logographic system, whose glyphs represent words or syllables.
Its name comes from the Greek word hieroglyphikóscomposition of hierós (“sacred”) and glyphein (“chiseling”), since it is a way of writing that, above all, was used carefully carved in stone, either through reliefs or bas-reliefs.
Characteristics of hieroglyphic writing
Hieroglyphs are signs that represent recognizable figures from nature or everyday life: animals, human beings or body parts, plants and objects of daily use. For example, an eye, the sun, the stars, an ear of wheat, different birds or a feather.
Hieroglyphic signs can be ideograms or phonemes, in relation to the value given to them in their interpretation:
- Ideogram. The ideographic value establishes that the hieroglyph can mean both the figure it represents and a concept associated with it. For example, a sun hieroglyph can mean either “sun” or “heat,” “illumination,” or “day.”
- Phoneme. The phonetic value establishes that the hieroglyph represents a sound that, together with other hieroglyphs, forms a word. A hypothetical example for the Spanish language would be that the union of a hieroglyph that represents the sun with a hieroglyph that represents a die, together, would form the word “soldier.”
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphic writing It was mainly used on the walls of temples in monuments and tombs, for religious purposes. Typically, hieroglyphs recorded myths of the gods, stories of the pharaohs or religious rites.
To record other types of data, such as administrative or state organization issues, The Egyptians developed other, simpler writing systems. Towards the end of the second millennium BC a simplified system called hieratic and, towards the 7th century BC. C., the demotic.
In Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, the organization of ideograms (drawings that represent ideas) and phonograms (drawings that represent sounds) was done within imaginary blocks, distributed from top to bottom, from left to right or from right to left.
This means that Egyptian writing could be read in any of these directions, depending on which way the represented figures were facing.
The oldest record of this system dates back to 3200 BC. C and these are inscriptions made on the Narmer Palette, a carved slate that was found in the temple of Horus in the ancient city of Hierakonpolis (present-day Egypt).
It is estimated that hieroglyphic writing continued to be used until the 5th century AD. C. Then, its interpretation was lost for centuries.
How were Egyptian hieroglyphics deciphered?
In the 18th century, the imperialist powers of Europe conquered Egypt and appropriated sculptures and different objects from the ancient Egyptian culture of the pharaohs. These objects ended up in European museums, including the great museums of London and Paris.
Among those pieces was a fragment of an ancient Egyptian temple in the city of Memphis, which had been built in 196 BC. C. in the name of Pharaoh Ptolemy IV. At some point in history, this stone had been moved and reused for a construction in the town of Rosetta, near the Nile Delta.
The “Rosetta Stone” had an inscription in Greek along with two other inscriptions that 19th century Europeans could not understand. The scientist Thomas Young identified the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra and, years later, Jean Francois Champollion recognized that they were three versions of the same text in different writing systems.
In 1822, after several years of study, Champollion reported that he had managed to translate the Rosetta Stone and that he was working on the preparation of a dictionary of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
References
- Ackermann, M.E., Schroeder, M.J., et al. (2008). “hieroglyphics”. Encyclopedia of World History. The Ancient World: Prehistoric Eras to 600 ce Vol I. Facts on File.
- Allen, James P. (2000). Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Cambridge University Press.
- Gardiner, Alan (1957). Egyptian Grammar, Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs. Oxford University Press.
