Hieroglyphics

Scott Noegel on Hieroglyphics

The ancient Egyptian writing system, in use for three thousand years (3200 b.c.–4th century a.d.), was first deciphered in 1822 by scholar Jean Francois Champollion. In 1799 a black basalt stele from the Ptolemaic Period was discovered in some rubble in the town of Rosetta. Named the Rosetta Stone, the stele is distinguished by three types of writing: hieroglyphics, Greek, and demotic. Since Greek was a known language, Champollion was able to identify the corresponding representation of the royal names Ptolemy and Cleopatra in hieroglyphics, realizing that they represented sounds as well as concepts. The equivalent in English would be to combine two ideograms. For instance, bee and leaf would represent the word belief.

Hieroglyphs, a Greek word meaning sacred carved letters, is a reflection of the Egyptian word medu netcher or the god’s words. The earliest hieroglyphs were chiseled into a stone stele for the purpose of preserving the name of the deceased. Hieroglyphs were thought to be so powerful that the symbol of the snake on a tomb wall was often fastened in place by the glyph of a knife so that it could not spring to life and harm the deceased.