Part 1

The Hieroglyphic Script

Spelling

Contrary to popular believe, hieroglyphs do not necessarily mean what they depict. In fact, there are three different ways in which they used:

• Ideograms are signs that actually mean what they depict. For example, sign 𓅓 can mean an “owl”. When a hieroglyph is used as an ideogram, it is often accompanied by a small vertical stripe to signify its use as such.
• Much more often though, they are used a phonograms. This means that every hieroglyph spells out specific sounds which can be combined into words. For example, the word 𓇋𓅓 ỉm, meaning the preposition “in”. It is made up of the individual signs 𓇋 and 𓅓, so the sign 𓅓 no longer means “owl”
• The third and last way in which hieroglyphs are used, is as determinatives. A determinative does not have a phonetical value, but serves the purpose of assigning a word to a general category. They help to clarify the meaning of a word or can be used to distinguish two phonetically identical words. Normally, determinatives are placed at the end of a word, but on occasion they can also appear at the beginning. This is the word 𓋴𓂝𓎛𓃶𓀼 sꜤḥ, meaning “nobleman” and it has two determinatives at the end: the goat and the man sitting on a chair.

Many hieroglyphs are however not limited to a single use, what means that it can be possible for one sign to, depending on the context, be used as either an ideogram, a phonogram or a determinative.

Reading direction

Hieroglyphic text does not have a set reading direction like most modern languages. Depending on the context, it can be read left to right or right to left. Yet when text is written vertically, it is always read from top to bottom. A handy trick to discern the reading direction of a source, is to look at the anthropomorph and animal-shaped sign: these signs will always look towards the beginning of the sentence. So for the following examples below, the reading direction goes as follows:

Types of signs

There are three types of phonetic signs: the uniliteral signs, which compose one consonant, the biliteral signs which compose two and finally the triliteral signs that are made up of three different consonants. On the page “Sign list”, you can find a complete list with a phonetical signs in the Ancient Egyptian language, ordered into uni-, bi- and triliteral signs respectively.