hieroglyphic writing, used on monuments and on the
famed ROSETTA STONE.
The Late Egyptian writings included the classic
hieroglyphs and the hieratic form. Definite and indefinite
articles were included, and phonetic changes entered the
language. In the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664–525 B.C.E.),
the demotic form became the accepted language. During
the Persian, Greek, and Roman periods of occupation on
the Nile, the demotic form was used for legal documents,
literary, and religious texts. The demotic is also included
in the Rosetta Stone.
Hieroglyphic Egyptianis basically a pictorial form,
used by the early Egyptians to record an object or an
event. The hieroglyph could be read as a picture, as a
symbol of an image portrayed, or as a symbol for the
sounds related to the image. In time the hieroglyphs were
incorporated into art forms as well, inserted to specify
particulars about the scene or event depicted.
Hieroglyphs were cut originally on cylindrical seals.
These incised, roller-shaped stones (later replaced by
handheld scarab seals) were rolled onto fresh clay jar
stoppers. They were used to indicate ownership of an
object (particularly royal ownership) and designated the
official responsible for its care. Such cylinders and seals
were found in the Predynastic Period (before 3000 B.C.E.)
and First Dynasty (2920–2770 B.C.E.) tombs. Hieroglyphs
accompanying the artistic renditions of the Early Dynas-
tic Period (2920–2575 B.C.E.) began to conform to certain
regulations. At the start of the Old Kingdom, a canon of
hieroglyphs was firmly in place. From this period onward
the hieroglyphic writing appeared on stone monuments
and bas-reliefs or high reliefs. The hieroglyphs were also
painted on wood or metal. They were incorporated into
temple decorations and were also used in coffins, stelae,
statues, tomb walls, and other monumental objects.
The obvious limitations of hieroglyphs for practical,
day-to-day record keeping led to another, cursive form,
called the hieratic. In this form the hieroglyphs were sim-
plified and rounded, in the same way that such writing
would result from the use of a reed-pen rather than a
chisel on a stone surface. In the Old Kingdom (2575–
2134 B.C.E.) the hieratic was barely distinguishable from
the hieroglyphic, but in the Middle (2040–1640 B.C.E.)
and New Kingdoms (1550–1070 B.C.E.) the form was
developing unique qualities of its own. This form was
used until the Roman era, c. 30 B.C.E., although during
the Ptolemaic Period (304–30 B.C.E.) Greek was the offi-
cial language of the Alexandrian court. CLEOPATRA VII
(51–30 B.C.E.) was the only member of her royal line that
spoke the Egyptian language.
The Egyptian language in the written form (as it
reflected the oral traditions) is unique in that it concerns
itself with realism. There is something basically concrete
about the images depicted, without speculative or philo-
sophical nuances. Egyptians had a keen awareness of the
physical world and translated their observances in images
that carried distinct symbolism. Gestures or positions
reflected a particular attribute or activity. The hiero-
glyphs were concise, strictly regulated as to word order,
and formal.
In the hieroglyphic writing only two classes of signs
need to be distinguished: sense signs, or ideograms, and
sound signs, or phonograms. The ideograms represent
either the actual object depicted or some closely con-
nected idea. Phonograms acquired sound values and were
used for spelling. The vowels were not written in hiero-
glyphs, a factor which reflects the use of different vocal-
izations and context for words in the oral Egyptian
language. The consonants remained consistent because
the pronunciation of the word depended upon the con-
text in which it appeared.
Hieroglyphic inscriptions consisted of rows of minia-
ture pictures, arranged in vertical columns or horizontal
lines. They normally read from right to left, although in
some instances they were read in reverse. The signs that
represented persons or animals normally faced the begin-
ning of the inscription, a key as to the direction in which
it should be read.
The alphabet is precise and includes specific charac-
ters for different sounds or objects. For each of the con-
sonantal sounds there were one or more characters, and
many single signs contained from two to four sounds.
These signs, with or without phonetic value, were also
used as determinatives. These were added at the ends of
words to give them particular action or value. The deci-
pherment of hieroglyphic writing was made possible with210 languageHieroglyphs, the writing of ancient Egyptians, now known to
be in use long before the unification of the Two Kingdoms, c.
3,000 B.C.E.(Hulton Archive.)