Egyptian Hieroglyphics
This is intended for those of you who are just starting
to learn to read hieroglyphs, or maybe just thinking about the possibility
of learning them. There is also a bibliography at the end that may be
of interest to students at various levels
.
Beginning at the beginning: Monoliterals
One of the first things that you learn when you start
to study Egyptian Hieroglyphs is the set of what are called monoliteral
signs. These are the signs that represent a single sound, usually a
consonant. Below is a chart that shows the monoliteral signs together
with their meaning. You will also find these same signs fairly early
on in most good books on Hieroglyphs.
In the chart below, the column headed "Manuel de
Codage" contains the transliterations commonly used when discussing
hieroglyphic texts in email messages.
If you've ever wondered what all the discussions on AEL
and elsewhere concerning /3/, /i/, and /'/ are all about, you'll see
that these are shown near the top of the list. They correspond to the
{eagle}, {read stalk}, and the {arm} respectively. The phonetic value
of these signs is by no means certain. Some insight into the problem
can be obtained by observing how the Egyptians wrote foreign names,
and how Egyptian names were written down by the scribes of other countries.
The problem is confounded by the fact that these sounds in particular
underwent a great deal of change during the c3000 years that the hieroglyphic
system was used. Fortunately, it is not necessary to know precisely
how these signs were pronounced in order to understand Ancient Egyptian!
There are other sites on the web that have an introduction
to Egyptian Hieroglyphs. The sites linked below have general background
information about reading hieroglyphs, together with more information
about reading signs. They are well worth a visit!
Transliterations
The system of transliterations used on AEL is based on
the Manuel de Codage format which uses characters that are available
on a standard computer keyboard. There is an overview by Geoffrey Graham
of the transliterations he uses in the list archives for Week
1. For general information about the Manuel de Codage format, see
this Manuel
de Codage page.
تعليقات
إرسال تعليق