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The Lion hieroglyph was used in ancient Egypt to represent the two consonants R+W together. When Alexander the great, a Greek-speaking Macedonian, conquered Egypt, he left it in the care of his general Ptolemy. When Alexander died, Ptolemy assumed the rule of Egypt. He and his descendants ruled the country, all the male rulers being called Ptolemy and all the females being called Cleopatra. They obviously needed some way of representing the L sound in their names, but sound L did not exist in Egyptian, so there was no hieroglyph to represent this sound. The scribes who wrote the inscriptions used the lion hieroglyph to represent the 'L' sound because RW was the closest sound in Egyptian to L. You will often see web pages that give Lion = L, but this is only partly true. The Lion hieroglyph was used in Ancient Egypt to represent the two consonants R+W together. When Alexander the Great, a Greek-speaking Macedonian, conquered Egypt, he left it in the care of his general Ptolemy. When Alexander died, Ptolemy assumed the rule of Egypt. He and his descendants ruled the country, all the male rulers being called Ptolemy and all the females being called Cleopatra. The sound L did not exist in Egyptian, so there was no hieroglyph to represent this sound. The scribes who wrote the inscriptions used the lion hieroglyph to represent the 'L' sound because RW was the closest sound in Egyptian to L. You will often see web pages that give Lion = L, but this is only partly true.

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16y ago

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