Hieroglyphs are pictures used to write the language of the ancient Egyptians. Instead of an alphabet, the Egyptians used hieroglyphs, or signs, to represent sounds. There were over 700 in all which could be used in various combinations to give particular meanings, or else to represent groups of two or three consonants. Sometimes a picture was added to the end of the word to explain the word. A special hieroglyphic sign would be added to the name of a goddess, just to make sure that the meaning was understood.
Hieroglyphs were carved into stone, painted on walls of tombs and written with pen and ink on papyrus. Another form of hieroglyphs, called hieratic, existed from the earliest times. This is a cursive from of Egyptian writing, as handwriting is to printed letters. A shorthand version of the language called demotic was used during the Late Period of the Egyptian history.
Hieroglyphs were seen as the ‘words of the god’ and the writing of a man’s name ensured that he would live on. By writing the correct spells on the walls of tombs and sections of papyrus, a safe passage to the Afterlife was ensured. Erasing a person’s name had the opposite effect. A royal name was usually enclosed in a cartouche – an oval shape with a horizontal line at one end.
According to Prof Frank Yurco of Chicago the language of the ancient Egyptians, Egypto-Coptic, is a member of the Afro-asiatic language family with two subfamilies: North African and Western Asian Semitic.
The earliest depictions of a writing system date from the early Dynastic Period and come from Upper Egypt (south) and the north of Nubia. The fact that writing originated in this region and not in the Delta (north), with its direct contact with Western Asia, is a sure sign that the Egyptians did not adopt the idea of writing from the Sumerians (Mesopotamia) as previously thought. They did make use of certain Mesopotamian ideas, but incorporated them into their own system and changed it to suit their own specific needs.
Today ancient Egyptian is a dead language, except where it survives in a form within the Coptic Church.
The Byzantine period was also the time of the first Egyptian Christians, the Copts. At this time a new writing system developed, called Coptic, using Greek letters combined with six signs taken from demotic. Therefore, the ancient Egyptian language was written, not in hieroglyphs anymore, but with the Greek alphabet.
The role of the Egyptian scribe
Most of the population of ancient Egypt could not read or write and therefore those who could were treated with respect. Scribes held a high position within their communities.
In the hieroglyphic script the word for ‘scribe’, shesh, was written with a sign depicting the writing equipment of the scribe. Young scribes did not learn hieroglyphs when they started their formal education, but would first be taught hieratic. For many years after that, they would practice copying old stories on ostraca – small fragments of clay pots or just limestone flakes. Only then would the fledgling scribe graduate to papyrus. Because so many Egyptian people were illiterate, most villages had a scribe to write letters and draw up legal documents on their behalf.
Papyrus
Writing was mostly done on papyrus, which was made from the papyrus reed. The term ‘papyrus’ can possibly be related to the Egyptian phrase ‘pa-per-ao’ which means ‘that which belonged to the king’. This could indicate to a royal monopoly on the export of papyrus, although this is not certain.
The inner white pith, cut into sections, of the thick reed stems, was placed vertically with the sections just touching. On top of this layer would go a similar layer, but placed in a horizontal position. This was then beaten with a mallet and then a heavy weight was placed on top. A waiting period then followed because the paper had to be dry before it could be smoothed with a polished stone. Then it was ready to be used.
Deciphering hieroglyphs
The knowledge of how to understand hieroglyphs was lost during the fourth century, but in 1799 a French soldier found a large basalt stone on the Rosetta branch of the Nile. This stone, called the Rosetta stone, became the key to the deciphering of hieroglyphs. It is inscribed with text in three different scripts: Greek, demotic (the last and cursive form of writing the Egyptian language) and hieroglyphs.
The importance of the stone was immediately recognised, and the Greek section was translated. Inked impressions and plaster casts were made and copies were sent to interested scholars. The first person to study the stone was a Swede named Akerblad, who discovered that the three sections were translations of one and the same text.
An English genius, Thomas Young, made the first breakthrough in deciphering the text. He managed to read the name of Ptolemy and deciphered six different signs. Young also understood the mathematical hieroglyphic symbols. He passed his findings on to the French scholar Jean-François Champollion, who took two more years to agree with Young’s theory. The script was not just symbolic, but a partial alphabet with a strict grammatical form. The final decipherment of hieroglyphs and the rediscovery of the Egyptian language, in which they were written, is the work of Champollion.