Transcription of the hiéroglyphes

There with the practice to say that there are as many rules of transcription of the hiéroglyphes than there are Egyptologists. In other words, it does not seem to exist of universal transcription Hiéroglyphe S. That is explained simply by the existence of obstacles difficult to cross to transcribe the hiéroglyphes accurately, obstacles which necessitate extrapolations which make illegitimate any supremacy of a system on another.

Transcriptions

It is however necessary to differentiate the current transcriptions, those which one can meet to indicate of the characters or the famous notions of Egyptian Antiquity ─ like Pharaon , Oudjat , Néfertiti or Ka ─, solidified, ambiguous transcriptions (same a Phonème of the Egyptian will be returned by a great number of different signs) and suitable for a language ( Néfertiti says German Nofretete in ) of the scientific transcriptions, used in Linguistique and Grammatologie (study of the writing) Egyptian. This second, more rigorous, uses a single symbol for same a Phonème, even if the value of this phoneme is not sure.

The scientific marking system can vary from one language to another: it keeps a constant base however. Its principal defect is that there remains unpronouncable: it is more a abstract Translittération than a transcription indicating a real reading. The scientific transcription cannot be used by the layman, who cannot read it and thus learn it easily. Moreover, it moves away largely from the uses already established in the modern languages.

One can thus compare the two versions of the quoted words: Pr ʿ3 is the scientific transcription of the word which one writes Pharaon , oudjat transcribes, inter alia possibilities, wḏ3.t , Néfertiti is worth nfr.t jy (J) .tj and ka k3 .

The phonetic problem

The written form of the Hiéroglyphe S is now well-known. However, even if that can appear contradictory, the way in which the language transcribed by the hiéroglyphes was marked (the Egyptian ) is difficult to reconstitute, this language having died since centuries. The only evidence we have about it is:

the language Copte, which derives from the Egyptian language;
texts of other languages, of which mainly the Greek , which quotes sometimes Egyptian names or words;
the comparative method, which makes it possible to establish possibilities of pronunciations by the establishment of agreements with others Afro-Asian Langues;
written form itself, which offers faulty texts making it possible to understand that if such sign were confused with such other waited, it is that both noted close phonemes.

To have an idea of the low reliability of the Greek quotations, it is enough to compare the way in which we transcribe the name of the capital of the China ( Beijing ) with the romanisation that the Chinese use themselves ( Běijīng ). Nothing proves that the words employed by the Greeks were pronounced with the Egyptian manner. Moreover, they could only adapt them to their clean phonological system, very distant from that of the Egyptian. However, many current Egyptian terms ─ like Pharaon , oudjat or the names of gods ─ come us from Latin via the Greek. One imagines easily how they could be deformed: of the Egyptian to the Greek, the Greek to Latin then of Latin to French…

Despite everything, by regrouping of the various sources and application of knowledge which one has of the others Afro-Asian languages (like the Copte, the Arab , the Hebrew , the Akkadien or the Haoussa), the Egyptologists manage more or less to put agreement on a certain number of sounds, and to create arbitrary conventions the purpose of which are to make it possible to the contemporaries to pronounce the Egyptian words. Because in addition to these difficulties of transcription of the written characters, it should be known that, as in the written forms Sémites, only the consonants are written: the Egyptian writing is indeed a Abjad. The vowels, they, were deduced intuitively (impossible task without a precise knowledge of the language). The vowels of the copte can, in a certain manner, to give an idea of possible vocalization. One should not however lose sight of the fact that the sounds of a language are in constant evolution: the copte can give only one index.

It should be also known that there did not exist rigid orthographical rules and thus that certain words could, at the time, being written of a multitude in ways. Lastly, the order of the hiéroglyphes in a word was not inevitably linear. Indeed their order could be upset by pure esthetic concern or to mark the respect towards a divinity whose name, for example, enters the composition of a word and who is then placed at the head. For example, the name of the Pharaon Toutankhamon was written in fact Amon - toutankh . This explains why for certain Pharaons little known, we are not certain of the order in which it is advisable to read the hiéroglyphes.

Nonscientific example of transcription

<-i-mn: *n->

Le name of the god Amon (see opposite) is composed of three Hiéroglyphe S which one agrees to say that they are the Phonème S, all three of the consonants, J , m and N (it should be noted that here J is not a J of J ean or a J of J year in Dutch, but a “weak consonant”, probably a “Glottal stop” comparable with the Arab Hamza ).

It is obvious that this skeleton of consonants, comparable with that of the radical Semitic, was pronounced with vowels. The placement of these vowels in the consonant radical names the vocalization . The hieroglyphic writing not having noted this vocalization, it is only indirectly that one can reconstitute it, all the more hazardous restitution as the value of the consonants itself is not always clear. For example, the J initial it is ─ is established ─ a weak consonant of which the pronunciation had only little incidence on the word and who could be used to write the /a/ vowel (in the same way that the Hebrew aleph or the alif Arab, who notes the same consonant and which has, of the remainder, given the Greek alpha marked /a/). The only real skeleton which remains thus limits to mn .

Currently, this god is called Amon , marked /am õ/by the French-speaking people, /amon/ elsewhere. That thus supposes that vocalization is I a' me o' N . This vocalization comes us from the Romans via the Greeks. The Greeks, indeed, heard Ἄμμων ámmôn , that the Romans transcribed Ammōn (even Hammōn ). In both cases, /o/ is long (and open in Greek, i.e., in API). Coptes, however, preserved this word in the form αμουν, which is read /amun/ (/u/ = or of wolf ). These first testimonys show us how much vocalization is variable from one language to another, more especially as there undoubtedly existed different accents according to the areas and that the phonemes evolve/move with time. Other testimonys return the interpretation of the word even more difficult: for the Babylonians of 15th at the 13th century before the Christian era, the word was read, according to their texts, Amāna (where ā is a /a/ length) or Amānu , Aman in a made up Mot. As for the Assyrians of 8th and 7th centuries, they heard Amūnu

From these divergent testimonys two constants come out however:

the first vowel is a /a/ short;
second is long, its oscillating stamp between/ō/and/ū/, two altogether close phonemes.

Thus, to want to know the real pronunciation of a word as frequent as the name of the Amon god proves to be impossible. That explains why it is not impossible to find, inter alia possibilities, of the transcriptions Imen , Imon , Amen , Amon or Amun for the same mot. This ambiguity is found in French since one usually speaks about the god Am ''' O ''' N (with a O ) but about the Pharaon Am ''' E ''' nophis (with a E ) whereas the radical jmn is common to both words.

The problem is thus double:

it is not always possible to allot to each sign a single value;
it is not possible to know in a precise way vocalization.

The only transcription which can achieve the unanimity must do without the vowels: it is jmn . It is scientist and very abstract, as one will note it.

Scientific system of transcription

This transcription is used in Linguistique, in the study of the Egyptian language. It aims to the greatest rigor and are connected almost with a Translittération. It is that which one uses in grammars, scientific works, of the grammatologic studies devoted to the Egyptian written form. Besides some details, this system is international.

The symbols of the column “restored pronunciation” follow conventions of the API; they are only assumptions, among those which the Egyptologists retain mainly. The column “pronunciation current” respects the French uses (the letter J note thus the initial phoneme of J have , etc).

Note : the first symbol is not available in Unicode; in fact, it was replaced here by the figure three, of similar form. The symbol employed is normally composed of two kinds of curved apostrophes one on the other.

Remarks concerning the symbols

The phoneme noted J (or ἰ in certain systems of transcription) represents a glottal stop when he is written J / ἰ , a yod (its initial of yurt ) when it is there / J (according to the adopted system). In fact, this glottal stop having evolved/moved in yod with time, it is not easy to determine which value it adopts. When the consonant J (or, more rarely, W ) is dumb and (in the radical tertiæ and quartæ infirmæ is not written, for example, or as a Augment; to consult the article on the Egyptian Language), it is written between brackets: ms (J) , “to put at the world”. In kind, there exist two sounds of origin different noted in a disconcerting way:

ἰ for the glottal stop;
J for the glottal stop become a yod;
there for the pure yod (that one breaks up into a succession of two jj , which is often the case in the hieroglyphic writing).

In many works ─ and this encyclopedia ─, one writes the two facets of the glottal stop, ἰ and J , in the same manner: ἰr (J) (“to make”) will thus be written jr (J) .

The consonant 3 was regarded a long time as a glottal stop. However of more recent research tend to prove than it is rather a rolled liquid, a /l/ or a /r/.

The signs D and ḏ , finally, are probably emphatic consonants (to consult Phonologie of Arabic ).

The symbols S / Z and S / ś are used per pair. A text which will make use of Z will not use ś , and vice versa. What an Egyptologist will write z3 will thus correspond so that another s3 will write.

Conventions of reading and writing

There exist some conventions to be known. First of all, it should be noted that the Egyptian words are never vocalized: it was seen, it is one of the main issues of the transcription. It is however current that one forces vocalization, even if it is not possible to determine it in detail (the comparison with the copte allows some projections however) by pronouncing 3 , J , ʿ and W , respectively, /a/, /i/,/ā/(long), and /u/ (of the ou' p ) after consonants. This convention is surely not stripped of direction because, in many Afro-Asian languages, these consonants are also used to note these vowels (they are then to subdue lectionis ). When the phonemes J and W are in contact with the other “semivowels”, one pronounces them like consonants in initial or median position, like vowels in the other cases, in order to alternate the consonants and the vowels. For example, the word j3w will thus be read /jau/ but jw3 will be returned /iwa/. When the succession of consonants does not use these signs, or of insufficient number, one introduces a /e/ short to facilitate the pronunciation: nb.t , “lady, mistress”, could be read /nebet/, nfr , “beautiful”, /nefer/, etc

Lastly, there exist three auxiliary signs which one uses to represent of the grammatical and morphological concepts:

the hyphen links the members of the made up words: jmn-ḥtp , “Amon-satisfaction” = “Amon in is satisfied”, i.e. Aménophis, 3ḫ-n-jtn , “glare of the solar disk (Aton)” Akhénaton, etc;
the point insulates the Désinence S and other marks uelles Cas: nfr , “beautiful”, nfr.t , “beautiful” ( .t being a female suffix of ), nṯr , “god”, nṯr.w , “gods” ( .w is a male suffix of Pluriel), etc;
the double hyphen (coded here by the equal sign ) makes it possible to locate the suffixes nobody ls words in a built state: pr.w=sn , word for word “maison.pluriel=à they”, “their houses”, sḏm=k , “entends=toi”, “you hear”, etc

Synoptic example

With final, the scientific transcription of the Egyptian is more than diverting. It proves especially useful for the specialists and cannot in no case to replace the everyday usages for the known words. One can quote, as example, the following sentence, drawn from the Mittelägyptische Grammatik für Anfänger of Erhart Graefe (4th edition, at Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2004) to show the complexity of the system:

One could read this sentence /re ʃwi seʤed depetenef/, which remains an approximation undoubtedly very far away from reality: the scientific transcription thus has this unquestionable advantage that the problem of the reading is evacuated to allow a precise notation of phonemes whose realization, altogether, imports little being studied of a so old language.

Hiéroglyphe ;
Transliteration of the hiéroglyphes;
transcription and romanisation.

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