What are the basic rules to reading and writing in hieroglyphics?

Answer 1

Egyptian hieroglyphs are an extremely complex and sophisticated writing system, so trying to establish "basic rules" is hopeless. A few rules that are useful to remember are:

• Hieroglyphs were designed to write the ancient Egyptian language and no other. The sounds found in that language do not always correspond to the sounds found in English (in fact they are very much closer to the sounds found in modern Arabic and Hebrew).
• Hieroglyphs did not write any vowels, only consonants. The writer and the native readers knew exactly which vowels belonged in each word, but that knowledge is lost today.
• Hieroglyphs are not an alphabet but a combination of ideograms, single consonant, two-consonant and three-consonant signs, together with other signs representing feminine, dual and plural word endings, plus signs called determinatives which help to categorise the meaning of a word.
• Hieroglyphs can be written left to right or right to left (the usual direction), or vertically downwards.
• Hieroglyphs always face the start of the line of text.
• Hieroglyphs are always neatly arranged to fit within invisible rectangles, making best use of the available space.
• There are no gaps between words, but there are specific clues to assist in identifying where a word ends and another begins (such as the determinatives placed at the end).
• The Egyptian language had no letter L (just like modern Japanese), so no native words include that sound. When spelling out foreign names such as Cleopatra and Ptolemy, the sign for rwwas used instead.
• The same word can be written in many different ways, sometimes using an abbreviation, or using different phonemes (sound signs) to spell out the word.

Beyond that, the system is highly complex and takes considerable time and effort to learn.