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Hieroglyphics
Hieroglyphics is a formal system of writing used by the ancient Egyptians. It is generally figurative, representing real or illusionary elements in a perfectly recognizable form, though the same symbol can be interpreted in diverse ways, based on context.
764 Questions
How do you write j in Egyptian hieroglyphics?
Hieroglyphics are actually sounds. The name Jordan phonetically in hieroglyphics would most likely be:
Ja - O - R - D- N
I am not an expert but I have researched into this subject. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Why did Egyptian scribes sometimes use hierotia and demotic symbol in of hieroglyphs when writing?
To write quickly on papyrus or sherds of pottery or stone. Hieroglyphs must be written slowly, carefully and grouped neatly in regulated ways; hieratic script wrote exactly the same signs but much more quickly and without the neat groupings - simply in a long line, like modern handwriting.
Demotic was even more quick to write, since it used many standard abbreviations for each sign, or even an entire group of signs. Today it is much harder to read because of these abbreviated signs, but for the ancient Egyptian scribes of the very Late Period it was a form of shorthand.
Was it hard to decode hieroglyphics?
I guess you mean the Rosetta Stone, and you mean "translate", not decode.
The biggest problem facing anyone looking at a script like that is not knowing the language. Having some idea of how the language works will always help to discover how the writing works.
Secondly, the reader must decide what kind of script is being used: alphabetical, syllabic, rebus or a mixture of all three.
Without knowing the language that is represented, knowing what kind of message is included is helpful; is it a religious text, a mathematical text, an account of events, a legal document and so on.
A major difficulty was that several important scholars had declared hieroglyphs to be a rebus, where every sign stood for a complete idea, word or even a sentence. This false theory was accepted by many other scholars and it served to lead the translators along the wrong path for some time.
The translators fortunately had a number of useful clues:
- The Coptic language was still being used in some areas of Egypt and the Coptic language is the very last stage in the evolution of the ancient Egyptian language. Many people looking at hieroglyphs had already studied Coptic.
- Other hieroglyphic texts had already made them discount an alphabet system, since there were far too many signs in hieroglyphs for it to be purely alphabetic.
- Champollion was the first to identify the mixed nature of the signs, which are composed of alphabetic, syllabic and ideographic signs as well as others without a sound value at all.
- The major bonus for translators was the associated text in Greek which could easily be read; this identified the kind of message contained in the inscription, it identified personal and place names, it included numeric values and other helpful elements.
Without the Greek text, translating the hieroglyphs would have been almost impossible.
What Egyptian symbol represents brotherhood?
The Ancient Egyptian word for brother is the same word for husband, and that word is sn. Since Ancient Egyptians did not 'write' vowels in heiroglyphics, it is unknown as to the proper pronunciation, but it is commonly spelled 'sen'.
Who went to school in ancient Egypt and what were they taught?
In Ancient Egypt, children would largely stay under the care and instruction of their mothers until they turned four. After this, the fathers took over the education for their sons, who usually learned the same trade as their father. Some kids could also attend a general school for their village or enter specialized schools for becoming a priest or scribe. Schools would have taught reading, sports, math, writing, manners, and morals.
Why did the Egyptians call their way of writing hieroglyphs?
They didn't. Hieroglyphic is a Greek word meaning "sacred carving." The name that the Egyptians themselves used for their writing was mdw nTr,* which means "divine speech." Many ancient peoples considered writing to be divine or magical and attributed its invention to gods or demigods.
*Egyptian vowels were not written. The capital T is a conventional representation of a sound something like English "ch."
How the Egyptians used hieroglyphs to communicate?
The hieroglyphic writing was used on both stone monument and for daily records and communication on papyrus scrolls. However most of the population was illiterate and this writing was primarily used by specially educated scribes.
What were the challenges that ancient egypt faced in communication?
Well, they were in the Middle of the Desert depending on where in the empire you're talking about. But certain coastal cites could've sent messengers abroad ships. And they did have camel riders but those were ineffective if there was a sandstorm. So most likely by ship
Here are five fun facts:
- The symbols represent both sounds and meanings, and a word typically included both kinds of symbols.
- The words could be written in any direction, but were most often written from right to left.
- Many people think the writing consisted of thousands of symbols, and it did, however, only about 700 were in common use, and to read most documents, that's all you would need to know.
- the phonetic symbols only represented the consonants of the word; we don't know what the vowels were for the ancient Egyptian language.
- Most ancient Egyptians could not read hieroglyphics. Only scribes, priests, and royalty were taught how to read.
What important information was written in hieroglyphics?
By far the most common use of hieroglyphs was in listing the names and titles of royalty and nobility, which could cover many columns of text in tombs. Many inscriptions were religious in content; some recorded battles and sieges; other texts related to medical treatments or magical spells; some were poetry or personal communications (for example between local military officers and their commanders); some texts are accounts of harvest produce, domestic animals or work tasks completed; some relate to the issue of food, beer, oil and tools to tomb workers.
The range of subjects is huge, from the ordinary, everyday speech of servants, workmen and farming labourers ("I have never seen the like of this goose") to long lists of offerings made to the gods ("1000 bread and beer, 1000 ox and fowl, 1000 alabaster and linen, 1000 food and provisions as everything good and pure on which a god lives").
What did Egyptian priests wear?
The Greek historian Herodot (5th cent. B.C.) wrote that no "products of living animals" must be worn in an Egyptian temple (book II, 81). This meant wool in particular. So they had to cloth in linen and wear sandals made of papyrus. There is no particular costume in the Old and Middle Kingdom. From the New Kingdom on we know elaborate skirts and dresses, similar to the ones which can be found in the representations of the Egyptian upper class. The "cheriheb" (=lecturer) can be seen often with a linen sash over their chest, and sometimes he is portrayed with two feathers in the hair.
The high ranking priests wore sashes, probably with gold ornaments similar to the ones the Pharaoh used, and a leopard skin. The leopard was considered a sacred animal, personification of the ancient sky-Goddess Mafdet. Perhaps the spots on the skin reminded the Ancient Egyptians of stars. Artificial leopard cloths had star-shaped items on it for the spots. A leopard skin was also seen connected to the beliefs of regeneration and rebirth in the afterlife, and with sun-God Ra. This can be traced back to the pyramid texts of the 5th dynasty. So in particular the Sem-priests, who had to perform the rituals of inspiriting the mummy before the funeral, wore this special garment, but also the deceased person! It can be seen as some sort of christening robe. Apart of the sash, they do not wear any jewelry.
Does the outside of a pyramid have hieroglyphics?
A pyramid has many hieroglyphics written on its walls, to decorate them and tell a story.
A Pharaoh is an Egyptian King who is at the highest social class.
How do you write Ra's name in hieroglyphs?
The real name of the ancient Egyptian sun god was not Ra or Re - those are simplified versions used by writers over the past 200 years by people who do not understand that hieroglyphs did not include any vowel sounds, only consonants.
The real name was written with the characters r (a mouth seen from the front), a glottal stop, 3, (written with an arm and hand) and finally a drawing of the sun itself (a disk with a dot in the centre, followed by a single vertical line indicating that this is a determinative). The name can also be followed by the sign for "god" - a seated man with a beard, or sometimes a seated man with a falcon's head. Neither the sun disk nor the "god" sign have any sound value.
Based on Egyptian personal names that include the name of the sun god written in the records of the Assyrians, Hittites and other neighbouring people, the name of the sun god was probably more like Ri'a. We can never know for certain.
See link below for the name as written in hieroglyphs (not the fake versions published on certain misleading modern websites):
What was the key to the interpretation of hieroglyphics?
The "Rosetta Stone" was a carved stele, or slab, which was created in 196 AD during the reign of Ptolemy V. It was discovered by the Napoleonic army in 1799 at Fort Julien, near Rashid (Rosetta), Egypt. Because the stele had essentially the same message written in three separate scripts (hieroglyphic, Egyptian Demotic, and Greek), it provided the key to deciphering the ancient hieroglyphic writing of Egypt.
What did the egyptians draw about in their hieroglyphics?
the answer to that is they drew about a lot of different things all the way from to talking about who rests in this pyramid to what events took place in the are
What was the key to unlocking hieroglyphics?
The decipherment of the Hieroglyphs was largely the work of Thomas Young of England and Jean-François Champollion of France. The hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone contains six identical cartouches (oval figures enclosing hieroglyphs). Young deciphered the cartouche as the name of Ptolemy and proved a long-held assumption that the cartouches found in other inscriptions were the names of royalty. By examining the direction in which the bird and animal characters faced, Young also discovered the way in which hieroglyphic signs were to be read.
In 1821-22 Champollion, starting where Young left off, began to publish papers on the decipherment of hieratic and hieroglyphic writing based on study of the Rosetta Stone (currently in the British Museum in London) and eventually established an entire list of signs with their Greek equivalents. He was the first Egyptologist to realize that some of the signs were alphabetic, some syllabic, and some determinative, standing for the whole idea or object previously expressed. He also established that the hieroglyphic text of the Rosetta Stone was a translation from the Greek, not, as had been thought, the reverse.
The work of these two men, Thomas Young of England and Jean-François Champollion of France, established the basis for the translation of all future Egyptian hieroglyphic texts.
What direction do you read hieroglyphics?
Hieroglyhs can be read in many directions. They can be read from left to right or right to left. Whichever direction the animals are facing you read he opposite. If they are facing to the left, then you read left to right. If they are facing right you read right to left.
How much did Egyptian priests get paid?
depending on how much work they've done sometimes it can be as large as a large property of land given to them by the god's wealth
How many hieroglphics are there in Egyptian art?
There are only about 700 different symbols that were commonly used, but the total number of symbols used is unknown.
Why do some hieroglyphs have two symbols?
Think of hieroglyphs as representing sounds rather than letters. Hieroglyphs are extremely adaptable and some signs can be rotated through 90 degrees to better fit the available space; others can not be rotated but have alternatives signs for the same sound.
For example the sound s can be written horizontally using the door-bolt sign, or it can be written vertically using the alternative folded cloth sign - neither of these signs can be rotated, but one of them would be chosen depending on the available space to maintain an orderly, neat grouping of signs.
Sometimes signs appear to have the same sound value in English, but in fact they are completely different in the ancient Egyptian language. For example three signs often (incorrectly) given the value h - reed shelter, twisted rope and circle with horizontal lines through it (placenta?) are really three different letters: h, emphatic h and throaty h. All these sounds are perfectly normal and easy for speakers of modern Arabic (for example), but English does not have these different sounds so English speakers struggle with them.
Some signs can express more than one sound, but often this represents standard spellings in different words. The vulture hieroglyph can stand for the word mwt (mother) when used as an ideogram or it can simply have the sound value mt - but as an ideogram it would be followed by a short vertical stroke to clarify what was intended.
