The Story of
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Prehistory Becomes History
The conventional view amongst historians is that the transition from prehistory to history occurs at the point at
which language can be recorded in a format that enables traditions and stories to be passed from one generation to
another. Evidence suggests that as soon as humans developed the ability to hold and utilise tools that required fine
motor skills, those tools had a secondary function in addition to skinning and cutting meat; that is the decoration of
the walls of caves.
Archaeologists recently discovered and dated the world’s oldest cave paintings to 40,800 years ago, located in
northern Spain. i Throughout the world, disparate communities, who would never have encountered one another,
developed this ability to communicate through simple art forms and the point at which these pictures began to hold
symbolic meaning is considered by scientists to indicate the evolution of modern man. This moment also heralded
the potential for the development of written language.
It is widely accepted that the first writing system was developed by the Sumerians in approximately 3400-3200 BC.
The system is known as cuneiform and was still in use until 75 AD. The Sumerian people lived in what is now
southern Iraq in a very fertile land which was farmed very successfully. They were also very enthusiastic traders and
book keepers and it is possible that their interest in record keeping led to the development of the cuneiform script
beyond the use of symbolic pictures. The word cuneiform means ‘wedge-shaped’ and related to the shape of the
letters that were carved into the clay tablets using a reed as a stylus in place of a pen.
Could Hieroglyphs be the First Writing System?
The general consensus amongst scholars is that hieroglyphs were developed shortly after the Sumerian script. Whilst
it is plausible that hieroglyphs were influenced by cuneiform, there is no explicit evidence to suggest that this is the
The Story of Egyptian Hieroglyphs © Tancia Ltd 2017
case. Establishing a timeline for the development of writing systems relies upon the discovery of examples of text
and the reliable dating of these examples. It is believed that the hieroglyphic writing system developed in Egypt in
approximately 3100 BC, although there are some examples of writing in Egypt that have been dated to circa 3400
BC, suggesting that its development dovetails that of the cuneiform writing system. These first examples of writing in
Egypt are found on inscribed seals at the tomb of a predynastic king known as Scorpion I which is located in Abydos. ii
What is clear is that both the Sumerians and Egyptians believed that writing was a divine creation. For the
Sumerians, it was believed that the god Enil was the creator of writing as well as being the god of breath and the one
who was responsible for the growth of crops. Egyptians believed that the god known as Thoth was responsible for
the invention of writing. In addition, he was the historian and scribe for the gods and some believed he also created
speech. This could be the reason for the ancient Egyptian belief that immortality could only be achieved if a person’s
name was spoken or permanently inscribed somewhere – hence the elaborately decorated tombs seen at the
famous pyramids amongst other sites.
The term ‘hieroglyphic’ is an adjective that describes the nature of a writing system; the symbols themselves are
referred to as ‘hieroglyphs’. The word ‘hieroglyph’ was first used by Clement of Alexandria in the late second century
AD. It originates from the Greek words, heiros which means ‘sacred’ and glypho meaning ‘inscriptions’. Egyptians
used the phrase mdwt ntr meaning ‘god’s words’ to describe hieroglyphs.
Whilst the religious and cultural purpose and perhaps origins of hieroglyphs is well documented, it has been
suggested that they were also important for trading and business:
“It was once thought that the origins of Egyptian Hieroglyphs are religious and historical, but recent developments
could point to an economical impetus for this script as well as push back the time depth of this writing system.” iii
The Story of Egyptian Hieroglyphs © Tancia Ltd 2017
The Evolution of a Writing System
Whilst it is impossible to know the exact date prehistoric man first lifted a writing instrument to record his thoughts
in writing, it is possible to determine the evolution of symbolic pictures into a writing system. William Anton Smith
suggested that a true form of writing emerges through a process of developmental stages:
1 Picture Writing System
To begin with, carved symbols or characters (known as glyphs) are used initially as a reminder of the
parts of the story before evolving into pictographs that directly represent objects, ideas or situations
within the story.
2 Transitional System
The next stage would see the glyphs not only representing the objects of the story but the names of the
objects as well.
3 Phonetic System
Finally, the glyphs focus on representing the sounds or spoken symbols regardless of their meaning. This
would firstly result in a glyph that represents a whole word, before the word being broken down into
syllables and lastly single sounds. iv
Reading and Writing with Hieroglyphs
In the Classical or Middle Egyptian period (ca.2000-1650 BC) there were approximately 700 glyphs in use and this
grew to more than 5000 glyphs by the Greco-Roman era (332 BC- 400 AD). v The rapid expansion of the writing
system follows the evolutionary stages described above. A common misconception is that the glyphs only had a
symbolic or semantic meaning. For example, the word ‘cat’ would be represented by a cat. In reality, in addition to
an image of a cat, there would also be glyphs that represented the phonetic sounds that formed the word ‘cat’, as
can be seen below; vi
The glyphs can be written in different directions – they can either be written from left to right (which was most
common) but could also be written from right to left or top to bottom, vertically in columns. In order to tell the
direction of any given text, it is necessary to study the heads of the animals or people which will be facing the start of
the line of text. There was no significance to which direction was chosen by the writer or inscriber, it seems it was
merely a question of artistic intention or desired aesthetic result.
Logograms, Phonograms & Determinatives
Most hieroglyphs had multiple meanings and uses. Each glyph is recognisable as a figurative or literal symbol. This is
known as a logogram and these were used for the most popular common nouns. Additionally, most glyphs also
represented phonetic sounds known as phonograms. If the glyph was being used as a logogram rather than a
phonogram this would be indicated by the use of a vertical stroke between the glyphs.
The Story of Egyptian Hieroglyphs © Tancia Ltd 2017
Whilst many logograms were obviously a visual representation of an object, the connection could also be indirect or
metaphorical. For example, the glyph for ‘flamingo’ was also the glyph for ‘red’ due to the bird’s colour. Likewise, a
hieroglyph of a temple flag was used to represent ‘god’ because of the association between the temple and worship.
Where glyphs were used as phonograms, only the consonants of a word were recorded. This practice is still seen in
modern written languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. Glyphs existed that represented one, two or three
consonants and were known as unilateral, bilateral and trilateral signs. The hieroglyphic ‘alphabet’ consisted of 24
unilateral signs but it is important to remember that the ancient Egyptians did not use these glyphs as an alphabet in
the modern sense.
As glyphs had multiple meanings and uses, additional glyphs would be used to act as determinatives. These
additional glyphs were necessary for two reasons; firstly, the lack of recorded vowels meant that the same
combination of consonant glyphs could represent several different words. Secondly, as is seen in spoken English, the
same word can have several meanings and the context of the sentence makes it possible to determine its specific
meaning that would not be possible to glean if the word was spoken on its own.
The Development of Hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphs
The notion of Egyptian Hieroglyphs conjures up images of tomb inscriptions and vast pyramid sites. In reality, there
were three different writing systems used in ancient Egypt with hieroglyphs reserved for use in formal inscriptions
on monuments and in places of worship, such as temples. These would have been constructed on a large scale but
could range greatly in appearance, with some highly decorated with coloured detailing and others formed from
simple outlines.
The Story of Egyptian Hieroglyphs © Tancia Ltd 2017
Hieratic Script
Hieratic script was also known as the script of the priests and was used in painting and manuscripts. Its content was
very similar to hieroglyphs but it had a more cursive appearance which would have been more suited to use on
papyrus, painted with reeds. A cursive script would not have been possible to produce on a large scale in chiselled
stone. Hieratic script would have been quicker to produce and use in an everyday context and over time some
frequently used groups of glyphs would have been connected by ligatures, in much the same way as modern cursive
handwriting runs letters together.
Demotic Script
Demotic script was also known as popular script or the script for document or letter writing and it replaced hieratic
script from around 600 BC onwards until the 5th century AD. By this time, the text had lost the pictorial element and
no longer resembled hieroglyphs. It has been suggested that it is more closely related in appearance to the Aramaic
texts located in the Fertile Crescent during this time period. vii Demotic script was highly cursive and had the highest
status in Egypt from the 4th century BC onwards. Within two hundred years, Greek had become the administrative
language of Egypt and therefore more important than Demotic and at this time the most significant documents
would have featured both languages. Demotic preceded the Coptic alphabet which was developed in 300 AD.
The Story of Egyptian Hieroglyphs © Tancia Ltd 2017
The Swedish scholar, Johan David Åkerblad described demotic script as ‘cursive Coptic’ and his work studying the
Rosetta Stone led to the publication of an alphabet for the demotic text that contained 29 letters (half of which were
accurate). In order to do this, he studied the Greek text of the stone and identified where proper nouns and names
were placed in the demotic text. A further breakthrough came when it was discovered that proper names, when
written in hieroglyphs, are contained within a cartouche, or a rectangular shape with rounded corners.
This discovery meant that it was possible to easily identify the proper names in all three texts and glean insight into
the phonetic meaning of the glyphs from this. The foreign names on the Rosetta Stone led to Thomas Young
discovering 80 similarities between hieroglyphs and demotic which had previously been viewed as completely
separate languages. With the knowledge of the cartouches, it was now possible to study other examples of
hieroglyphs with the intention of seeking out the cartouches and deciphering their contents.
The Demise of Hieroglyphs
Many factors led to the demise of hieroglyphs during the 4th and 5th century AD. As use of the Coptic alphabet
became more widespread, demotic text disappeared with the most recent example dated to 11th December 452 AD,
at the Temple of Isis at Philae. viii The Isis Temple also houses the last example of monumental hieroglyphs known as
the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom which is dated 24th August 396 AD.
The Story of Egyptian Hieroglyphs © Tancia Ltd 2017
By the 4th century AD, the hieroglyphic texts had become so specialised and expansive with over 5,000 glyphs that
few Egyptians were able to read them. Additionally, the Byzantine emperor, Theodosius I, ordered the closure of all
pagan temples throughout the empire in the late 4th century AD as Christianity had now been established as the
main religion of the Roman Empire. As these temples were lost, so too was the ability to decipher the hieroglyphs
and they remained a mystery until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799.
When the Coptic language is written today using the Greek alphabet it makes use of a small number of hieroglyphs
that originated as demotic glyphs. It can also be argued that due to the phonetic nature of Egyptian hieroglyphs, they
were the inspiration for all modern conventional alphabets that began with the Phoenician alphabet which
originated in modern Lebanon in 1200 BC.
Hieroglyphs Rediscovered
Early deciphering attempts
Knowledge of the existence of hieroglyphs never disappeared, but the understanding of them extinguished with the
abolition of the pagan temples in the 4th century AD. In the centuries that followed, many tried to provide an
interpretation for the meaning of the symbols, including Horapollo in the 5th century who gave a translation for
almost 200 glyphs, some of which were later found to be accurate. Early scholars over-emphasised the obvious
differences between hieroglyphs and the Greek and Roman alphabets which did not contain any pictorial content.
This focus on the appearance of the glyphs led to the misunderstanding that they did not contain any syllabic or
phonetic information:
“Believed to be authoritative yet in many ways misleading, this [the work of Horapollo] and other works were a
lasting impediment to the understanding of Egyptian writing.” ix
Further attempts at translation were made in the 9th and 10th century by two Arab historians, Dhul-Nun al-Misri and
Ibn Wahshiyya followed by Athanius Kircher in the 17th century. These attempts were also hampered by the
conviction that each glyph was merely a symbol representing an idea as opposed to containing any phonetic
information. A translation might attempt to explain why a particular glyph represented a given object and struggle to
find even a tenuous connection, when in reality the glyph represented a sound within the word for the object.
The Rosetta Stone
In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt and interest in ancient Egyptian culture experienced a renaissance as artefacts were
brought back to Europe. In the following year, a French captain Pierre Bouchard discovered the Rosetta Stone at Fort
Julien, close to the town of Rashid or Rosetta in the Nile Delta. It is believed to have been on display at a temple
originally, but moved and used as building materials during the early Christian or medieval period when pagan
temples had been closed.
The Rosetta Stone is believed to be part of a bigger stone known as a stele, or an upright stone slab or pillar which
bears an inscription and serves as a marker. The original dimensions of the stele can be approximated by comparing
it to other steles from the same era in addition to calculating how much text is missing from each of the three
sections.
The Story of Egyptian Hieroglyphs © Tancia Ltd 2017
The text of the Rosetta Stone is a decree asserting the rule of King Ptolemy V over Egypt, following his coronation in
Memphis, aged just 12 years old. It also confirms his place amongst the gods to be worshipped by the Egyptian
people and instructs that a copy of the decree should be placed in each temple. The Stone has been dated to 196 BC
and is written in three different languages, the first section at the top of the stone is written in ancient Egyptian
Hieroglyphs, with the middle section in Demotic script and the final portion at the bottom of the Stone in ancient
Greek. The use of three languages on the Rosetta Stone confirms that the languages had different roles at the time
of its construction.
The riddle of the Rosetta Stone was not solved immediately but took a number of historians more than twenty years
of collaboration. Some of the significant milestones included:
1799 Recognition that the three separate texts contained the same content in three languages.
1802 Discovery that the demotic text contained examples of foreign names that had been spelt with phonetic
characters.
1814 Discovery of phonetic spellings of foreign names also appearing in hieroglyphic text in addition to other
substantial similarities with the demotic text.
1822 Recognition that phonetic spellings were also used in the spelling of native Egyptian words.
By the 1820s, the hieroglyphic script had been completely deciphered by Jean-François Champillion assisted by many
historians that preceded him. Champillion was a natural linguist as well as a historian, able to speak Latin, Greek and
six other ancient languages by the age of sixteen. One of these languages was Coptic which proved invaluable in the
translation of the Rosetta Stone text. Champillion was able to identify that the glyphs were:
“alphabetic… syllabic, and determinative, meaning that he depicted the meaning of the words himself.” x
The key to Champillion’s decipherment was the realisation that the Coptic language (which followed hieroglyphs
once the development of the Phoenician alphabet had taken place) could be used to aid the translation. Coptic was a
descendent of hieroglyphs and was still used by the Coptic Church in Egypt as a liturgical language.
The Story of Egyptian Hieroglyphs © Tancia Ltd 2017
When the British defeated the French in Egypt in 1801, the Rosetta Stone was transferred to the British Museum in
London in 1802 where it has been on display ever since. It is the most popular exhibit in the museum and has only
been moved from the public gallery on two occasions. One of these occasions was in 1917 when it spent two years in
an underground station of the Postal Tube Railway at Mount Pleasant, close to Holborn, 50 feet below ground to
protect it from heavy bombing.
The Rosetta Stone is not unique in the sense that further examples of the same decree have since been discovered,
two of which predate the Rosetta Stone. The significance of the Rosetta Stone has been its role in unlocking the
ancient Egyptian world through its remarkable language.
i
More information about the El Castillo cave paintings can be found at
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120614-neanderthal-cave-paintings-spain-science-pike/
ii
Information taken from http://www.ancientscripts.com/egyptian.html
iii
Quotation taken from http://www.ancientscripts.com/egyptian.html
iv
W A Smith, The Reading Process, 1922, Macmillan
v
Statistics taken from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/egyptian.htm
vi
Images taken from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/egyptian.htm
vii
Information taken from http://www.ancientscripts.com/egyptian.html
Information taken from
viii
http://www.academia.edu/4057252/The_Death_of_Demotic_Redux_Pilgrimage_Nubia_and_the_Preservation_of_Egyptian_Cul
ture
ix
Quotation taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone referenced to Parkinson, Diffie & Simpson, (1999) Cracking
codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment, University of California Press.
x
Quotation taken from http://www.discoveringegypt.com/Egyptian-Hieroglyphic-Writing.html
The Story of Egyptian Hieroglyphs © Tancia Ltd 2017
IMAGE CREDITS
Image of cave paintings –
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/SantaCruz-CuevaManos-P2210651b.jpg
Image of hieroglyphs on a tomb –
http://madisonclarke.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/1-1289565894-the-second-tomb-hieroglyphics1.jpg
Image of hieroglyphic alphabet –
http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/egyptian_1c.gif
Image of hieratic script - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Prisse_papyrus.svg/310px-
Prisse_papyrus.svg.png
Image of demotic script taken from Rosetta Stone -
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/DemoticScriptsRosettaStoneReplica.jpg
Image of hieroglyphs with cartouches –
http://img.posterlounge.de/images/wbig/kenneth-garrett-aegyptische-hieroglyphen-159361.jpg
Image of Isis temple at Philae-
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/The-Temple-of-Philae-on-Agilika-Island.jpg
Image of projected stele containing Rosetta Stone -
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/RosettaStoneAsPartOfOriginalStele.jpg/170px-
RosettaStoneAsPartOfOriginalStele.jpg
Image of the British Museum - http://www.britishmuseum.org/images/ingallery384.jpg
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W A Smith, The Reading Process, 1922, Macmillan
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http://www.academia.edu/4057252/The_Death_of_Demotic_Redux_Pilgrimage_Nubia_and_the_Preservation_of_Egyptian_Cul
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone
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