Is Egyptian writing a type of cuneiform?

Answer 1

No. The Egyptians had another system of writing. They painted the things themselves, and even the classical Egyptian pictures are readible as words or syllabs. Some of those mini-pics existed before the Old 1st Dynasty. But to connect those mini-pics for the sake to tell stories began very soon in the Old Egyptian culture. Their main tool was it, to paint with ink, not to scrape-and-add tiny lines. They surely had words to name the things, "hand", foot", "head" - you know - any visible thing, and soon they used to take this first sound to name the mini-pic in a more free way, they could combine them to new words and another language, and some signs named an integrated ABC.

This result works so:

if the scribe wished p.e. to tell, "Meyer had a meeting with the prince of On" - so he could chose between several possibilities. At first he needs to ensure, that some written elements are 1 name, and 1 title. - The same problem had the cuneiform-writer, too, and the Chinese writer has it still (they have too much signs, some for things, some for sounds) - there is a collection of signs to mark categories of words: ideograms. So there will be a little sitting man near the name of Meyer. If he is a very important one, he'll put the elements for the sound of "my" and "R" in brackets, called cartoushe: "a man" |( my, R ) - he can write this from left to right or from up to down or from right to left, or in oxen-way changing the direction in each row of the text - the mini-pics will always "look" in this direction, how to read on. This is easy so see. It had to look nice.

Well, now, "he met" or "he had a meeting"? The verbum of "met" has the sound of "mad" (crazy) - if our scribe wishes to offend a bit, he choses the mini-pic of a crazy person for "met", if not, he choses a "head" and "meat" and adds "i", "n", "g" - and should add the hint, "doing". He needs no sign for "with" and now he may add the "prince"-pic and the mark for "itself, not the sound" - this is a little '-stroke beneath. He need no sign for "of", because this word follows directly - but On is his city of UN.U - he marks the ideogram of "city", (x), and paints the tiny hare for "UN" and the "U" shape.

He may add, that the sentence ist finished, like the Chinese language, which then adds the closing word-pic of "finish".

They had soon a very great lot of sings for each sound - imagine the scriber wishes to be more poetic, he could chose to paint as much as possible little crocodiles in his text, then he could took all known derivations of pics of crocodiles (holy for the *Sobek of the city of Memphis) and put those in the sound of his complete sentence. I,agine a song of love and the sound of "heart" - he would take a little heart even for the word of "hard" (heavy) and he would seek for formulations with that sound anywhere, often.

Some devellopments were parallel the same in cuneiform-writing, p.e.the first time gave the most sounds for signs, later the first spoken languages went out of use, and then the signs meant the thing oder the sound - now it needed the special knowlegde to read it. The cuneiform languages semm to use more constantly ideograms than the Egypts. The Egyptian scribe often had 2 or 3 methods of writing textes. The most beautiful needs time and you need the ability to paint nice and recognible pics for the things. So they had another, a quick form, for papyri - this war a simple developement of pics, each sign more simple - and one type of writing is called "hieratic", used by the priests.

If the text had a "mental problem" within his told content, they could decide to paint the signs defect, p.e. each "bird"-sign with no legs, or a "head" without ear, then the reader would see this and be cautious to save his soul.

The Egyptian scribe was the child of scribes, belonging to the community of *Djehuti and in honour like the kings families - they didn't teach the people, how to write or read, they learnt this in their family-secrets. People admired them as magicians, because a scribe could open a very ancient building, take a script from the helmet of a sculpture - or he looked under the feet of it, wether there is a hidden text in it, and he could tell the sound of that - and each other scribe could do the same and the sound was surely similar, the same.

But surely - 3000 years was a long time, gvernements changed, languages changed, some texts were telling something - but what they were telling of was forgotten. Then they decided, what this semt to tell and filled this in in another situation.

Diplomatic textes to other lands were written in cuneiform signs. They knewe this, too, but wouldn't mix it with their own way to fix textes. This was heraldic and belonged to each nation.

mfG WiT :)