Representative pictograms without phonetic components? © Getty Images Thus, a hieroglyphic pictogram of a hawk was said to represent the concept of swiftness, a pictogram of a crocodile to symbolise all that was evil. They dismissed any phonetic component in the hieroglyphs, and claimed that they were conceptual or symbolic signs. They thought that hieroglyphs – the word means ‘sacred writings’ – were impenetrable symbols of ancient Egyptian wisdom, which had nothing to do with alphabets. Greek and Roman authors generally credited Egypt with the invention of writing, as a gift from the gods. Many also come to represent simple sounds: in the pictograms of the hieroglyphic ‘alphabet’, for example, the ‘hand’ pictogram stands for ‘d’. However, pictograms can become unrecognisable over time, as in demotic. Pictograms are semantic signs that are pictorial in origin – think of the signs on toilet doors. The standard script by the time of the Rosetta Stone, it is a cursive script with joined-up letters, suitable for handwriting, unlike the monumental hieroglyphic. It was coined by French soldiers in Egypt with Napoleon, because the oval rings reminded them of the shape of their gun cartridges.ĭemotic script was derived from the far more ancient hieroglyphic script and used from about 650 BC. Nevertheless, the Coptic language would prove invaluable in reading the hieroglyphs by providing approximate pronunciations for ancient Egyptian words.įrench for ‘cartridge’, the word also applies to the oval rings enclosing certain groups of hieroglyphs – generally names and titles. Spoken Coptic was descended from the language of ancient Egypt, but written Coptic was not hieroglyphic it was entirely alphabetic, like Greek and Latin. Thereafter, Egypt was ruled first by Coptic Christians, then by Muslims, until the time of Napoleon. This ended with the death of Cleopatra VII and the Roman occupation in 30BC, which lasted until AD395. For three centuries Egypt was ruled by the Greek-speaking Ptolemaic dynasty, named after Alexander’s general, Ptolemy I – one of whom created the Rosetta Stone in 196BC. The reason was that the ancient civilisation described in the hieroglyphs, founded before 3000 BC, went into eclipse in the second half of the first millennium BC, when Egypt was conquered – first by Persians, and then by Macedonian Greeks under Alexander the Great in 332 BC. No Greek or Roman writer could read hieroglyphs, either. Yet his works were of little or no help to 19th-Century scholars in understanding ancient Egyptian writing, for in classical antiquity, hieroglyphic writing fell into disuse. In his Histories, Herodotus identified the pyramids at Giza as places of royal burial, and provided important information about the process of mummification. In fact, it has exerted a powerful influence on the world of learning for well over two millennia, beginning with the Greek historian Herodotus, who travelled in Egypt around 450BC. Rosetta Stone: A history of translating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphsĪncient Egypt was as celebrated in ancient Athens and Rome as it was in 19th-Century Paris and London.However, he was obliged to admit that he did not know who was buried in the tomb, or when, because no-one could read hieroglyphs. On display to the public was a magnificently carved and painted one-sixth scale model of an ancient Egyptian tomb, which had been discovered four years earlier in the area of ancient Thebes (modern Luxor), later to be known as the Valley of the Kings.Īt the inauguration ceremony, the tomb’s Italian discoverer, Giovanni Belzoni – a former circus strongman turned flamboyant excavator of Egypt – appeared wrapped in mummy bandages before a huge crowd. The venue, the Egyptian Hall, was decorated with Egyptian motifs, two statues of Isis and Osiris, and hieroglyphs. Encouraged by Napoleon’s dramatic invasion of Egypt two decades earlier, ‘Egyptomania’ was catching on in Britain as it had in Paris. The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb wouldn’t happen for another century but in 1821 in Piccadilly, London, an exhibition about ancient Egypt opened.
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