EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS

HIEROGLYPHIC SYSTEM The hieroglyphic system used in ancient Egypt had between 700 and 800 basic symbols, called glyphs. This number grew in the last centuries of ancient Egyptian civilization, because of an increased interest in writing religious texts. Egyptians wrote hieroglyphs in long lines from right to left, and from top to bottom. They did not use spaces or punctuation. The Egyptians did not write vowels, so it is impossible to know exactly how they pronounced hieroglyphic texts.

USING HIEROGLYPHS The ancient Egyptian word for hieroglyphs, literally translated as “language of the gods,” indicates their importance. Priests used hieroglyphs to write down prayers, magical texts, and texts related to life after death and worshiping the gods. When preparing their tombs, many people had autobiographies and hieroglyphic guides of the afterworld written on the surfaces of tomb walls and on the insides of coffins. The Egyptians believed that these texts helped guide the dead through the afterlife.

USING HIEROGLYPHS CONT’D The use of hieroglyphic inscriptions was not limited to religious purposes. Civil officials used them to write royal documents of long-term importance, to record historical events, and to document calculations, such as the depth of the River Nile on a specific day that year. They used hieroglyphs to decorate jewelry and other luxury items. They carved the symbols into stone or wood, and case them in gold, silver, and other metals. They painted hieroglyphs on various surfaces, occasionally artists carved semiprecious stones or rare woods into hieroglyphic shapes and then inlaid them into walls or pieces of furniture.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT A standardized form of hieroglyphs developed rapidly in the earliest years of Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period ( BCE). Little change in the system took place during the following 2,600 year period of Egyptian civilization. Hieroglyphs were very time consuming to create, so the Egyptians developed a cursive script called hieratic in the early years of hieroglyphic use. Hieratic was used for the bulk of writing done with reed pens and ink on papyrus. In the 7 th century BCE the Egyptians began using a script called demotic, which was even more simplified than hieratic.

DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHS After the fall of ancient Egyptian civilization in 30 BCE, the meaning of hieroglyphs remained a mystery from about 1,800 years. Then, during the French occupation of Egypt from 179 to 1801, a group of French soldiers and engineers uncovered a large stone now known as the Rosetta Stone. This stone bore an ancient inscription containing the same text written three different ways- in hieroglyphs, in the demotic script, and in ancient Greek. The stone was taken to Europe, where scholars translated the ancient Greek and used the information to decipher the other two texts.