About 5000 years ago, in the northeast corner of Africa, the people living along the Nile River began to set their language down in writing. Like most cultures that just begin to invent a writing system, the Egyptians used pictures to write their language. Eventually the symbols came to represent sounds. The pictures became known as hieroglyphs or ‘sacred inscriptions’, because they were often written on the walls of temples.
The Egyptians continued to use hieroglyphic writing for more than 3500 years, until about 400 AD. After that, the language was written in the Greek alphabet with several extra letters added for Egyptian sounds that did not exist in Greek. This late form of Egyptian is called Coptic. Eventually optic was replaced by Arabic, the language spoken in Egypt today. Since there was no one left who know knew to read, read write or speak the ancient language, it died out. Only the hieroglyphs are let to tell us that the language ever existed.
For more than 1000 years, travelers to Egypt were fascinated by the mysterious symbols they saw carved on the walls of temples and tombs. Since no one could tell them what hieroglyphs meant, they made up fantastic translations. They thought that hieroglyphs recorded magic spells and secret religious practices.
The latest hieroglyphic text that has been found was written in 394AD. At that time, there were only a very few people who still knew how to use the ancient Egyptian writing system, and when they died, their skills died with them. The most important key to deciphering hieroglyphs was discovered by accident in 1799 by a Frenchmen who had gone to Egypt with the invading army of Napoleon Bonaparte. While these men were preparing to build a fortress at the modern town of Rashid (also known as Rosetta), they uncovered a broken stela that was covered with writing. This stela, dated precisely to March 27, 196 BC, is called the Rosetta Stone. It is probably the most famous Egyptian inscription ever found and is certainly the most important. The writing upon it was written in more than one language, split into three distinct sections. The top was written in hieroglyphs. The middle was written in Demotic, a late form of the ancient Egyptian language that was spoken at that time. The bottom section was written in ancient Greek because there were many Greeks living in Egypt in 196BC. The ancient Greek was still taught in schools in 1799, and this made it possible to translate the Rosetta Stone and use it as a key to deciphering other hieroglyphs written elsewhere. It took another 23 years to really be able to clearly decipher hieroglyphic writing. A young Frenchmen, Jean-Francois Champollion, became the first person in modern times to read ancient Egyptian.
When you look at a group of Egyptian hieroglyphs on a statue or a wall or in a book, you may think that each hieroglyph stands for a word. In few cases, you would be correct. Some hieroglyphs do mean what they represent. For example, a picture of the sun (usually shown as a circle with a dot in the middle) means sun. However hieroglyphic writing is more than picture writing. Although at first they probably were used as pictures, most hieroglyphs eventually began to represent sounds.
Twenty-four hieroglyphs represent the single sounds found in the ancient Egyptian language. When Egyptians wrote a word in hieroglyphs, they arrange the symbols to look attractive and save space. Hieroglyph can be written from left to right, or from right to left or in columns from top to bottom. You can tell which way hieroglyphs are supposed to be read by looking at the animals, plants, and people. If they face left, start reading from the left. If they face right, begin at the right. Read toward the faces.
The direction in which a hieroglyphic text was written depended on the kind of text it was and how it was used. When the ancient Egyptians wrote long inscriptions, such as official documents or historical texts without illustrations, they usually wrote the hieroglyphs facing right. If an inscription was used to decorate a building, the Egyptians often wrote the hieroglyphs in different directions. When a hieroglyphic text is part of a scene that contains more than one person, the direction that the hieroglyph face can help you to determine which of the text refers to which person. Almost always you can tell the part of a text refers to a figure because the hieroglyphs and the figure face the same direction.
More than 6000 hieroglyphs have been identified, of which about 700 hieroglyphs were used at any one time and only about 250 of these were used frequently.
Very few people in the ancient world knew how to read and write. Most Egyptians could not read the long hieroglyphic texts on the walls of their temples. Reading and writing were skills of the trade learned by a scribe. This profession was often passed along in families so that a person whose father was a scribe became a scribe. Many of these scribes worked in the government and became quite important people.
The Egyptians used some hieroglyphs as amulets or good luck charms. The Eye of Horus is a charm of healing that appears frequently in Egyptian art and jewelry.
The scarab beetle was a very powerful amulet. These little creatures are also called dung beetles because they collect huge balls of manure when they lay their eggs. In Egyptian mythology it was a scarab beetle that pushed the sun into the sky when it rose at dawn. The beetle hieroglyph represented sounds that could spell the Egyptian word the means "come into existence".
Another Egyptian hieroglyph sometimes used in modern jewelry is the ankh. Ankh means "to live", and this hieroglyph frequently appears in Egyptian wall paintings, on coffins, and in ancient jewelry.
I hope you enjoyed this brief introduction to hieroglyphs. It would take many years of in-depth study to understand this fascinating language. If you are interested in other reference materials on hieroglyphs, contact The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or visit the Internet.
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©1998 Jasmin Jahal