A hiéroglyphe ( " h-" dumb: one should always make the connection) is a character of the Egyptian writing . The hieroglyphic writing is figurative: the characters which compose it represent various objects indeed, - natural or produced by the man -, of the plants, the figures of gods, human and animals (cf Classification of the hiéroglyphes). The Egyptologists traditionally distinguish the Idéogramme S (or Pictogramme S), which appear the element itself, the sound records , which corresponds to a consonant isolated or a series from consonants, and the determinative , signs “dumb” which indicate the lexical field to which belongs the mot. Appeared at the beginning of, it will perdurera until the Roman epoch, that is to say during more than three thousand years. The knowledge of the hiéroglyphes was lost with the closing of the pagan places of worship by the emperor Théodose, and one will need the exceptional chance to find the Pierre de Rosette as well as the genius of Jean-François Champollion to break, after fourteen centuries, which appeared to be “a seal put on the lips of the desert”.

Etymology

The word hiéroglyphe drift of the Greek word ἱερογλύφος / hieroglúphos , formed itself from ἱερός / hierós (“crowned”) and γλύφειν / glúphein (“to engrave”).

At the time gréco-Roman, the word indicated “that which traces the hiéroglyphes” and not the hiéroglyphes themselves, which were said/ tà hieroglyphiká (grámmata) , i.e. “them (characters) crowned engraved” on the monuments (steles, temples and tombs). Later on, by a shift in meaning, the word hiéroglyphes ends up indicating the hieroglyphic characters themselves.

By extension, one often qualifies hieroglyphic a writing using the same principle logographic as the Egyptian. Thus, one speaks about the hieroglyphic hittite . It is however not allowed to say Chinese characters which they are hiéroglyphes (they are Sinogramme S). Hiéroglyphes as sinogrammes belong to the vaster whole of the Logogramme S (not to be confused with the Logotype S, symbols specific to a company, a product).

History and evolution

The hieroglyphic writing is attested as of the end of, about at the time where the wedge-shaped characters appeared in Mésopotamie. It was employed during more: 3000 years: the last inscription known to date is dated August 24th, 394, and is in the temple of Philaé.

As of the Ancient Empire, the hieroglyphic Egyptian was a written form where mix Idéogramme consonant S, signs (unilitères, bilitères, and even trilitères) and determinative (see low). From, the scribes used a certain number of bilitères like Syllabaire S ( sȝ, bȝ, kȝ etc) to transcribe the Semitic names or of Semitic origin, but the writing known as syllabic never left this field.

Whatever their function, the signs are figurative: they represent something of tangible, often easily recognizable, even for somebody who is unaware of the direction of the sign. Indeed, for the drawing of the hiéroglyphes, the Egyptians took as a starting point their environment: objects of the daily life, animals, plants, parts of the body. At the time of Old, Means and New Empire, there existed approximately seven hundred hieroglyphic signs, whereas at the time gréco-Roman, one counted some more than six thousand.

The hiéroglyphes were engraved on stone or, in the case of the hieratic writing, traced with the calame and ink on a less durable support.

The use of the engraved hiéroglyphes was limited to the fields where the esthetics and/or the magic value of the words had importance: formulas of offerings and frescos funerary, religious texts, official inscriptions.

The hieratic writing is the cursive form. Held for the administrative documents and the private documents, it had as a support the papyrus, the ostraca (shards of pottery or limestone), the parchment or of the wood shelves. The Egyptologists distinguish it from the hiéroglyphes called linear, which were painted on the Sarcophage S out of wood and the papyruses of the “Livres of dead the”. The linear hiéroglyphes more preserve the figurative aspect of the engraved hiéroglyphes, but were traced with less precision than the latter.

As from the time saïte (), the hieratic one was partially supplanted by a cursive news, the Démotique. It is about an extreme simplification of the hieratic writing, reserved for the administrative acts and the documents of the everyday life, from where its name of “popular” writing. The hieratic one was then used more only to consign religious or sacerdotal texts, jointly with the hiéroglyphes, from where its name of “sacerdotal” writing. At the time ptolémaïque, the Greek asserted himself more and more like administrative language: starting from -146 the contracts only written into demotic had lost any legal value.

The Copte is the last stage of the language and the writing Egyptian women. It still is used nowadays, but only as liturgical language. He is written by means of the Greek alphabet to which one added seven characters demotic to transcribe the foreign sounds with the Greek.

The Egyptian writing is currently used any more to write some modern language only it is. However, it should be noted that according to certain researchers, it is it which, via the proto-sinaïtique one, would have given rise to the alphabet phenician, which, in its turn, will be at the origin of the Hebrew alphabets, araméen and Greek, therefore Latin and Cyrillic characters.

The written form

The engraved hiéroglyphes all are, or little is necessary oneself some, figurative: they represent real or imaginary elements, sometimes stylized and simplified, but perfectly recognizable in the majority of the cases.

Champollion, the scanner of the hiéroglyphes, regarded as the father of Egyptology, defines the hieroglyphic system as follows: It is a complex system, an at the same time figurative writing all, symbolic system and phonetics, in the same text, the same sentence, I would say almost in same a mot.

Indeed, the same character can, according to the context, interpreted being in various ways: like sound record ( phonetic reading ), like Ideogram or determinative ( semantic reading ). We will further see than the determinative one, who is not read, facilitates the reading in “determining” the lexical field to which the word belongs: thus, the determinative one of the “sitted man” (has 1 according to the classification of Gardiner) accompanies the words indicating the function (“vizier”, “priest”), the profession (“craftsman”), the ethnos group (“Asian”, “Egyptian”, “Libyan”, “Nubian”) or the family ties (“father”, “wire”, “brother”).

Note: In the parts which follow, the hiéroglyphes will be transliterated, i.e. transcribed in Latin characters. (cf the article on the transliteration)

Phonetic reading

One reads the character independently of his direction, according to the principle of the rebus. The sound records are made either of a consonant (signs known as mono - or unilitères ), or of two (signs bilitères ) or of three (signs trilitères ). The twenty-four signs unilitères constitute the hieroglyphic pseudo-alphabet (see low).

It should be specified that the hieroglyphic writing is connected with a Abjad: it does not note the vowels, unlike the Cunéiforme for example. It is a defective writing.

Thus, the hiéroglyphe representing a duck is read sȝ , because such were the consonants of the word indicating this animal. One can however use the sign of duck without relationship with the direction to represent the Phonème S S and ȝ after (independently of the vowels which could accompany these consonants) and thus to write words like sȝ , “wire” or, while supplementing with other signs which one will detail further, sȝw , “to keep, supervise”, sȝṯ.w , “dry land”:

The hieroglyphic “alphabet”

For certain characters, the principle of the rebus became that of the acrostic: nothing any more but the first consonant of the mot. is read. For example, These are those that one reads when the word indicates indeed the mouth. This character, however, is used in the other cases for its only initial consonant, the R .

The fabric part folded in the optative formula “that he lives, that is to say prosperous, in good health”, if not like unilitère S .

Thus, one can gather the twenty-four signs unilitères in a kind of hieroglyphic “alphabet”, which, however, was never used like such to replace the others hiéroglyphes, although it had been possible: indeed, all the Egyptian words could have been written by means of these only signs, but the Egyptians did not never cross the step and simplified their complex writing in alphabet.

The Egyptian pseudo-alphabet is thus composed of characters noting only one consonant, although some of them indicate some several when they are employed like Idéogramme S. here in the conventional order of the dictionaries and grammars:

Phonetic complements

The Egyptian writing is often redundant: indeed, it is very frequent that a word is followed several characters noting the same sounds, in order to guide the reading. For example, the word nfr , “beautiful, good, perfect”, can be written only by means of the trilitère He is thus written nfr+f+r , but one reads nfr .

The redundant characters accompanying the signs bilitères or trilitères are called “phonetic complements”. They are placed in front of the sign to seldom supplement (), after (in general) or they frame it, thus being used as assistance with the reading, the more so as the scribe, for reasons of penmanship, reversed sometimes the order of the signs (see low):

The phonetic complements in particular make it possible to differentiate the homophonous. Indeed, the signs always do not have a single reading:

The presence additional phonetic - and determinative suitable - makes it possible to know which reading to follow:

• St :

• ws :

• ḥtm :

Lastly, it happens sometimes that words changed pronunciation compared to the former Egyptian: in this case, it is not rare that the writing adopts a compromise in the notation, the two readings being indicated jointly. It is the case in particular for the adjective bnrj , “soft (I. E. of a pleasant savor)”, become bnj , and the verb swri , “drinking”, become swj . They are written, as an average Egyptian, bnrj and swri ,

Semantic reading

In addition to a phonetic interpretation, the characters can be read for their direction: one speaks in this case about logogrammes (or Idéogramme S) and about determinative (or sémagrammes).

Logogrammes

A hiéroglyphe used as Logogramme indicates the object of which it is the image. The logogrammes are thus generally common nouns; they are always accompanied by a dumb vertical feature indicating their value of logogramme (the use of the vertical feature is detailed lower); in theory, all hiéroglyphe could have been used as logogramme. The logogrammes can be accompanied by phonetic complements. Here some examples:

In some cases, the semantic relationship is indirect (metonymic or metaphorical):

Determinative

The determinative ones or sémagrammes are placed at the end of the mot. They are dumb characters being used to indicate the lexical Champ mot. the cases of Homographie S being very frequent (more especially as only the consonants are written), the recourse to determinative is paramount. If a similar process existed in French, one would make follow the words homographs of an index which one would not read, but who would specify the direction of them: “towards” and plural “towards” would be thus distinguished.

There exist the many determinative ones: divinities, human, left the human body, animals, plants etc determinative Certains have a clean direction and a direction illustrated. Thus, the roller of papyrus,

Here some examples of use of determinative allowing to illustrate the importance of it:

i.e. young military recruits. The word has as determinative a child carrying the hand with his mouth.

with like determinative the plan of a house;

Foot-note: knows a duel, indicated sometimes by two features).

All these words have the méliorative connotation good “, beautiful, perfect”. Let us note that a recent dictionary indicates a score of words being read nfr or formed starting from this word - proof of the extraordinary richness of the Egyptian language.

Direction of reading

The hiéroglyphes are written from right to left, from left to right or from top to bottom, the usual direction being from right to left. The reader, to know the direction of reading, must consider the direction in which are turned the asymmetrical hiéroglyphes. For example, when the human figures and the animals, easily locatable, look towards the left, it is necessary to read from left to right, and conversely.

The words are not separated by white or punctuation marks. However, certain characters appear especially at the end of the word, so that it is sometimes possible to distinguish the words by this skew. It is obvious however that only a solid knowledge of the language and its syntax makes it possible to cut out a text in words.

The quadrat

The hiéroglyphes however are not simply aligned the ones following the others: indeed, they are distributed harmoniously in a virtual square (i.e. not traced), or quadrat (also written quadrat ), with the manner of the Sinogramme S. With the difference of the sinogrammes, however, any character entirely does not fill the quadrat.

In a text writes from left to right, the quadrats are connected obviously from left to right; the signs which occupy them read from left to right then from top to bottom or from top to bottom then from left to right. If the text is laid out in vertical columns, the quadrats are piled up the ones on the others, but nevertheless the direction of reading is the same one as for a text laid out in horizontal lines.

Calligraphic and forced characteristics

There exist several calligraphic characteristics, of which here the principal ones:

1. the characters are divided into quadrats (see higher);
2. to prevent that a quadrat is not incomplete, one reverses sometimes signs in order to make the unit more compact. In the same way, in a preoccupation with an esthetics, one chooses carefully the phonetic complements, though there is redundancy;
3. one reverses sometimes the hiéroglyphes birds holding in a quadrat and the signs of a quarter of quadrat (the p for example); in this case, the small characters precede and occupy the hollow of the quadrat;
4. one can omit signs, especially those noting the phonemes ȝ and J ;
5. the signs designating the gods are placed at the head statement, of Syntagme or made up Mot, by honorary anteposition (respectful inversion).

However, even if the hiéroglyphes are reversed, the reading and the transliteration do not hold obviously account of it.

Additional signs

Feature of replacement

The characters offensive, disastrous, Tabou S, rare or complex can be replaced by an oblique feature:

Cartridge

One places in a cartridge the names of gods (exceptionally) and the last two names (King de Haute and Low-Egypt and Fils of Re) of the royal titulature (always):

Feature of filling

One makes use of the feature of filling to finish a quadrat which would be, if not, incomplete.

Bound signs

There exist signs which are the contraction of several others. These signs have a clean existence however and function like new signs: for example a front armlever whose hand holds a sceptre serves as determinative with the words meaning “to direct, lead” and to their derivatives.

Redoubling

The redoubling of a sign indicates its duel, tripling its plural.

Not-figurative signs

It acts:

• of the vertical feature indicating that it is about an ideogram;
• of the two oblique features of the duel and the three vertical features of plural;

Orthography

The concept of a “correct” orthography of the hieroglyphic Egyptian is not posed in the same terms as for the modern languages. Indeed, for almost each word, there exist one or more alternatives. Consequently, one can wonder whether the concept of correction orthographical were not foreign with the Egyptian language. Indeed, one finds there:

• of the redundancies;
• of the omissions of graphèmes, which one is unaware of if they are intentional or not;
• of the substitutions of a graphème for another, so that it is impossible to distinguish a “fault” from an “alternative” orthography;
• of the errors and the omissions in the layout of the signs, all the more problematic when the writing is cursive: hieratic but especially demotic writing where the schematization of the signs is extreme.