Hieroglyphs

HIEROGLYPHS, sacred carvings, the picture characters of ancient Egyptian writing, and of analogous scripts found in Crete, Asia Minor and Syria (Hittite), the Sinai peninsula, etc. The ancient Egyptian system seems to have originated, developed and finally expired strictly within the limits of the Nile valley, its only ascertained offshoot being the Meroitic (q.v.). It is essentially Egyptian and adapted only to the expression of the Egyptian language, for Egyptian monumental use by Egyptians. It was carried by conquest up the Nile into Nubia, and across the Sinai desert and the Levant into Palestine and Syria, and may have contributed to the formation of the Phoenician alpha bet and other modes of writing in Asia.

The discovery by Champollion (q.v.) of the key to Egyptian writing in 1822 brought about the first effective entry of histor ical investigation into a vast ancient world of monuments before the age of Greece and Rome, but the century that has passed since then has brought our knowledge and understanding of the language and writing to a wonderful completeness.

From the 4th Dynasty onwards the mode of writing in Egypt was essentially that extinguished by the fall of paganism in the 4th century A.D. Its elements in the hieroglyphic form were pictorial, but each hieroglyph had one or more well-defined functions, fixed by convention in such a manner that the Egyp tian language was expressed word by word in writing never in tended to convey merely an idea. How far this holds good for the period before the 4th Dynasty, it is difficult to say. The known inscriptions of the earlier times are so brief and so limited in range that the system on which they were written cannot yet be fully investigated. In the r st Dynasty, phonograms (see below) were in full use. But the spelling then was very concise ; it is possible that some of the slighter words, such as prepositions, were omitted in the writing and were supplied from the context. As a whole, we gain the impression that a really distinct and more primitive stage of hieroglyphic writing by a substantially vaguer notation of words lay not far behind the time of the ist Dynasty. It must be clearly realised that the Egyptian hieroglyphic system did not provide for the notation of vowels; only con sonants were recorded.

The employment of the signs is of three kinds: any given sign represents either (I) a whole word or root; or (2) a sound as part of a word; or (3) pictorially defines the meaning of a word the sound of which has already been given by a sign or group of signs preceding. Thus signs, according to their employment, are said to be (I) "word-signs," (2) "phonograms," or (3) "de terminatives." Phonograms may be used also as word-signs and word-signs as determinatives, but phonograms rarely occur as determinatives.

Word-signs.—The word value of a sign is, in the first place, the name of the object it represents, or of some material, or quality, or action, or idea suggested by it. Thus 2 is hr, "face"; a vase of ointment, is mrh.t "ointment"; is wdb, "turn." No other system of writing bears upon its face so clearly the history of its development, yet much investigation is still re quired to establish the origins of the values of the signs; in some cases the connection between the pictures and the primary values seems to be curiously remote. Probably all the signs in the hieroglyphic signary can be employed in their primary sense. The secondary value expresses the consonantal root of the name or other primary value, and any, or almost any, derivative from that root; as when , a mat with a cake upon it, is not only htp, an "offering-mat," but also lap in the sense of "conciliation," "peace," "rest," "setting" (of the sun), with many derivatives. In the third place, some signs may be transferred to express another root having the same consonants as the first; thus, from the middle kingdom onwards, 4, the ear, by a play upon words can express not only Seim, "hear," at that time changed to sdm, but also Sdm, "paint the eyes." Phonograms.—The limited number of signs found with this use are of the greatest importance. By searching throughout the whole mass of normal inscriptions, earlier than the periods of Greek and Roman rule when great liberties were taken with the writing, probably no more than one hundred different phono grams can be found. The number of those commonly employed in good writing is between seventy and eighty. The most im portant phonograms were the uniliteral or alphabetic signs, twenty-four in number in the Old Kingdom and without any homophones; later these were increased by homophones to thirty. Of bilitcral phonograms—each expressing a combination of two consonants—there were about fifty commonly used: some fifteen or twenty were rarely used. As Egyptian roots seldom exceeded three letters, there was no need for triliteral phonograms to spell them. There is, however, one triliteral phonogram, the eagle tyw or tiu (?), used for the plural ending of adjectives in y formed from words ending in t (whether radical or the femi nine ending).

The phonetic values of the signs are derived from their word sign values, and consist usually of the bare root, though there are rare examples of the retention of a flexional ending; they often ignore also the weaker consonants of the root, and on the same principle reduce a repeated consonant to a single one, as when the hoe I\ hnn, has the phonetic value hn. The history of some of the alphabetic signs is still very obscure, but it is nearly certain that the values of all were obtained on the same prin ciples. It seems that "acrophony" (giving to a sign the value of the first letter of its name) was indulged in only by priests of the latest age, inventing fantastic modes of writing for the decoration of temple walls. Some of the ancient words from which the phonetic values were derived probably fell very early into disuse, and may never be discoverable in the texts that have come down to us. The following are among those most easily _. X forearm, value `(y) ; from ?-? , '(y), "hand." mouth, value r; from <=>, r, "mouth." *--=. udder and vulva, value h; from o ° h.t., "belly." (The feminine ending t is here, as usual, neglected.) tank, value s; from n, s, "tank." A slope of earth "slope," or brickwork, q; from d . d , q, "height." o , (The doubled weak consonant is here neglected.) For some alphabetic signs more than one origin might be found, while for others, again, no clear evidence of origin is yet forthcoming.

The writing expresses only consonants. In the Graeco Roman period various imperfect attempts were made to render the vowels in foreign names and words by the semivowels, as also by ..Ja , the consonant y which originally rep resented having been reduced in speech by that time to the power of K only. Thus, IIroXEµacos is spelt Ptwrmys, Antoninus, `Nt'nynws or Intnyns. Much earlier, throughout the New King dom, a special "syllabic" orthography, in which the alphabetic signs for the consonants are generally replaced by groups or single signs having the value of a consonant followed by a semivowel, was used for foreign names and words, e.g., m», "chariot," o ? o was written C? , o'i-nan, "tower" was written \\I this represents an endeavour to express the .vocalization, it was carried out with very little system. In practice, the semi vowels are generally negligible. This method of writing can be traced back into the Middle Kingdom, if not beyond, and it greatly affected the spelling of native words in New Egyptian and demotic.

Determinatives.

Most signs can on occasion be used as determinatives, but those that are very commonly employed as phonograms or as secondary word-signs are seldom employed as determinatives, and when they are so used they are often somewhat differentiated. Certain generic determinatives are very common, e.g., J of motion; , of acts involving force; , of a person or a man's name; , of buildings; ®, of inhabited places; M.') , of foreign countries.

In the earliest inscriptions the use of determinatives is re stricted to the 4, jj, etc., after proper names, but it developed immensely later, so that few words beyond the particles written without them in the normal style after the Old Kingdom.

Some few signs ideographic of a group of ideas are made to ex press particular words belonging to that group by the aid of phono grams which point out the special meaning. In such cases the ideogram is not merely a determinative nor yet quite a word-sign.

1? 1 Thus AN, = ..`o "Semite"; 5 "Libyan," etc., but 1 cannot stand by itself for the name of any particular foreign people. So also in monogram is Jm - is sb "conduct." Orthography.—The most primitive form of spelling in the hieroglyphic system would be by one sign for each word, and the monuments of the 1st Dynasty show a decided tendency to this mode. Examples of it in later times are preserved in the royal cartouches, for here the monumental style demanded special conciseness. Thus, for instance, the name of Tethmosis III., MN-UI PR is spelled O Et= R` is the name of the sun-god, with customary deference to the deity it is written first, though pronounced last) .

A number of common words—prepositions, etc.—with only one consonant, are spelled by single alphabetic signs in ordinary writing. Word-signs used singly for the names of objects are generally marked with I in classical writing, as lb, "heart," I hr "face," etc.

I But the use of bare word-signs is not common. Flexional consonants are almost always marked by phonograms, except in very early times, as when the feminine word +-i=. = h•t• "belly," is spelled or. The rule is one sign one value, but as some signs having the most diverse origins were liable to con fusion with each other in variable writing, such were generally provided with "phonetic complements," a group being less easily misread than a single letter. E.g., the reel of cord wz, is regularly written wz(w), but the mace I hz, is written hz(z). This practice also distinguished determinatives from phonograms. Thus the root or syllable hn is regularly written I t to avoid confusion with the determinative t. Redundance in writing is the rule; for instance, b: is often spelled , (b)b;(:). Biliteral phonograms are very rare as phonetic complements, nor are two bilateral phonograms employed together in writing the radicals of a word.

Spelling of words purely in phonetic or even alphabetic char acters is not uncommon, the determinative being generally adeed. Thus in the pyramid texts we find hpr "become," written in one copy of a text, in another 0 . Such variant spellings are very important for fixing the readings of word-signs. Though words were so freely spelled in alphabetic characters, especially in the time of the Old Kingdom, no advance was ever made towards excluding the cumbersome word-signs and bi literal phonograms, which by a judicious use of determinatives could have been rendered superfluous.

Abbreviations.

We find strictly `nh z s standing for the ceremonial viva! 'nil wz: bib. "Life, Prosperity and Health," and in course of time the determinative was used in ac counts instead of A3ft. dmz, "total." Monograms are frequent and are found from the earliest times. Thus 93=i , mentioned above are monograms, the associa tion of O and IN having no pictorial meaning. Another common monogram is , i.e., and for 1i: t- rw "Hathor." A word-sign may be compounded with its as hz "white," or with its determinative, as In "silver." The decorative value of hieroglyphics was fully appreciated in Egypt. The aim of the artist-scribe was to arrange his variously shaped characters into square groups, and this could be done in great measure by taking advantage of the different ways in which many words could be spelt. Thus hs could be written , is-n f . But some words in the classical writing were intractable from this point of view. The alphabetic signs obviously played a very important part in the formation of the groups, and many words could only be written in alphabetic signs. A great advance was therefore made when several homophones were introduced into the alphabet in the middle and New Kingdoms, partly as the result of the wearing away of old phonetic distinctions, giving the choice between -- – and for s, o , and 11 for t, 1, and C for m, M and V for n, and and Q. for w. In later times the number of homophones in use increased greatly throughout the different classes, the tendency being helped by the habit of fanciful writing; but few of these homophones found their way into the cursive script. Occasionally a scribe of the old times indulged. his fancy in "sportive" or "mysterious" writing, either inventing new signs or employing old ones in unusual meanings. Short sportive inscriptions are found in tombs of the 12th Dynasty; some groups are so written cursively in early medical papyri, and certain religious inscriptions in the royal tombs of the i9th and loth Dynasties are in secret writing. Fanciful writing abounds on the temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.

Hieroglyphic is normally written from right to left, the signs facing to the commencement of the line; hieratic and demotic follow the same direction. But monumental hieroglyphic may also be written from left to right, and is constantly so arranged for purposes of symmetry, e.g., the inscriptions on the two jambs of a door are frequently turned in opposite directions; the same is frequently done with the short inscriptions scattered over a scene amongst the figures in order to distinguish one label from another.

In modern founts of type, the hieroglyphic signs are made to run from left to right in order to facilitate the setting where European text is mixed with the Egyptian. The table shows them in their more correct position, in order to display more clearly their relation to the hieratic and demotic equivalents.

Clement of Alexandria states that in the Egyptian schools the pupils were first taught the "epistolographic" style of writing (i.e., demotic), secondly the "hieratic" employed by sacred scribes, and finally the "hieroglyphic" (Strom. v. 657). It is doubtful whether they classified the signs of the huge hiero glyphic syllabary with any strictness. The only native work on the writing that has come to light as yet is a fragmentary papyrus of Roman date which has a table in parallel columns of hieroglyphic signs, with their hieratic equivalents and words written in hieratic describing them or giving their values or meanings. The list appears to have comprised about 46o signs, including most of those that occur commonly in hieratic. They are to some extent classified. The bee heads the list as a royal sign, and is followed by figures of nobles and other human figures in various attitudes, more or less grouped among them selves, animals, reptiles and fishes, scorpions, animals again, twenty-four alphabetic characters, parts of the human body carefully arranged from 0 to J , 32 in number, parts of ani mals, celestial signs, terrestrial signs, vases. The arrangement down to this point is far from strict, and beyond it is almost impossible to describe concisely, though there is still a rough grouping of characters according to resemblance of form, nature or meaning. (In modern lists the signs are classified according to the nature of the objects they depict, as human figures, plants, vessels, instruments, etc.) Horapollon's Hicroglyphica may be cited as a native work, but its author, if really an Egyptian, had no knowledge of good writing. His production consists of two elaborate complementary lists, the one describing sign pictures and giving their meanings, the other cataloguing ideas in order to show how they could be expressed in hieroglyphic. Each seems to us to be made up of curious but perverted rem iniscences eked out by invention, but they might some day prove to represent more truly the usages of mystics and magi cians in designing amulets, etc., at a time approaching the middle ages.

The early scribe's outfit, often carried slung over his shoulder, is seen in the . It consisted of reed pens, a small pot of water and a palette with two circular cavities in which black and red ink were placed, made of finely powdered colour solidified with gum. In business and literary documents red ink was used for contrast, especially in headings; in demotic, however, it is very rarely seen. The pen became finer in course of time, enabling the scribe to write very small.