Egyptian Hieroglyphs W. V. DaviesREADING THE PAST Ancient Writing from Cuneiform to the Alphabet Introduced by }. Hooker THE BRITISH MUSEUM PRESSEGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS 82 36,37 2 The Scripts By the Late Period of Egyptian history three distner scripts were in use for writing the Egyptian language. They ate known as hieroglyphic, hieratie and demotic respectively. They ate superficially different from each other in appearance but actually represent the same writing system, hieratic and demotic being merely cursive derivatives of hiero- elyphic. All three were eclipsed during the Roman Period by a fourth seript, called Coptic, which was based on the Greek alphaber and operated on quite different pein ciples. The present chapter will be dev important external features and conventions of the scripts; the principles underlying the ir with in the next chapter ‘mainly to an account of some of the more native system will be Hieroglyphic This was the eatiest form of Egyptian script, and it was also the longest-lived. The ist hieroglyphs appear in the late Predynastic Period, in the form of short label-texts on stone and pottery objects from various sites, probably co be dated within the range 3100-3000 ac, while the last datable examples are o be found in 2 temple inscription fon the island of Philae carved in ab 394, nearly three and 2 half thousand years later. ‘Originally the script was employed to write different kinds of texts, in a variety of media, but as its cursive version, hieratic, developed, hieroglyphic was increasingly confined to religious and monumental contexts, where it was rendered most typically in ‘carved relief in stone. It was for this ecason that the ancient Greeks called the individual elements of the script ta biera grammata, ‘the sacred letters, or ta bieroglyphica, ‘the Sacred carved (letters), from which oue terms ‘hieroglyph’ and ‘hieroglyphic’ are lerived. The signs of the hieroglyphic seripe are largely pictorial of indeterminate form and origin, but most are recognisable pictures of natural or exhibit fine derail and iconic in character. A fow man-made objects, which, when carefully executed, may colouring, although they are conventionalised in form and their colous is not always realistic, There is little doube that the best examples of the script have ‘an intrinsic beauty of line and colour’ that fully justifes the claim, often made, that “Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is the most beautiful ever designed’. Its pictorial character should rot, however, mislead one into thinking that the script isa kind of primitive “picture writing’. Ic iS a full writing system, capable of communicating the same kinds of complex linguistic information as our own alphabet, though it does so by different which means tha its constituents do igns convey meaning, others convey means. Typologically the scripts ‘mixed’ systen not all perform the same functions some of the sound (see Chapter 3). ‘The system was never limited to a ixed number of hieroglyphs. It contained a rela: tively stable core of standard signs throughout its history, but, in addition, new signs were invented as required, while others fell imto disuse. Developments in. material culture weee influential in this process. Innovations in Egyptian weaponry atthe begin- ning of the New Kingdom, for example, saw the introduction of hieroglyphs for the horse and chariot, eg, 3, and for anew type of sword, (=. By the same process, ‘other hieroglyphs became obsolete and were either changed inform or enticely replaced ‘hei forse royal epresh-zonn wasn the Thtenh Dynasty andy inthe hadaddabhb ppeeeye