How to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs into Russian. Ancient Egypt. Hieroglyphs. Modern approach to character coding

Try to write your name in hieroglyphs. Use the following characters instead of vowels:

Unstressed vowels can be omitted or replaced with close-sounding vowels. Instead of v put f, and instead of l- sign (ideogram lion).
In this exercise, you are practicing transliterating your own name into Egyptian hieroglyphs. Like any transliteration, your version only roughly corresponds to the original. At the end of male names, draw a figurine of a seated man, and at the end of female names, a figurine of a woman. Both of these signs are among determinants (determinants).
Having selected the desired hieroglyphs, try to arrange them into a rectangle, as in the examples below:

The last name in the left column is taken from ancient texts. This shows that our technique of writing names in hieroglyphs is not new and is not purely educational in nature: it was borrowed from the Egyptians themselves, who used it to reflect foreign names in writing, for example, the Greek rulers Cleopatra, Ptolemy or Alexander.

The word "hieroglyph" comes from the Greek "Chieros" ("sacred") and "glyphos" ("words" or "signs"). For the first time, the designations were used by the philosopher Clement of Alexandria in the period from 150 to 230 AD.

What do the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt mean?

The ancient Egyptians called them "Mju netger" which meant "Divine words"... The first signs of the hieroglyphic writing of Ancient Egypt were found on jewelry and utensils made of ivory, ceramic vessels and clay prints. The signs date back to the pre-dynastic period of reign (from about 3400 to 3200 BC). The last inscription was inscribed on the frescoes of the Philae temple in 394 AD.

Reading the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt would remain a mystery to mankind, if in early XIX century Frenchman Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) did not translate the record into and did not compose the system of Egyptian writing.

The emergence of ancient hieroglyphs in Egypt

Little is known about the origin and development of Egyptian writing. During the construction of the temples in Abydos, short phrases were already used. They foreshadowed the emergence of a full-fledged language. However, many designers were not fluent in the language and needed training. Because of this, theories arose that the construction in Egypt was carried out by representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations.

Some scholars believe that the ancient Egyptians borrowed the idea of writing from Mesopotamia. Since the goods brought from neighboring states were marked with marks of weight and production, they considered this method convenient for transmitting information. But their letter underwent significant changes and did not at all resemble the script codes of their neighbors.

Others believe that hieroglyphic writing originated in ancient Egypt and then spread to the territory of other states. This is evidenced by papyri dating from the reign of King Scorpio I around 3400 BC.

Writing in Mesopotamia was formed over an extended period of time. The "logogram" (a picture representing a word) was invented back in 8000 BC. The path from logograms to phonetic writing took about 5 thousand years. Hieroglyphic records became widespread only in 3200-3100 BC. Short phrases in Egyptian can be found in Abydos. However, their meaning is often impossible to translate. One of the most recognizable hieroglyphic signs were the "zigzag lines" for "water." The existence in the early dynastic period is evidenced by artifacts from the reign of Pharaoh Narmer. The language was finally formed by the time of the construction of the pyramids of the fifth dynasty.

Deciphering the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt

Influence of Mespotamia on the writing of Ancient Egypt

No direct connection has been found between the scenario of the development of the hieroglyphic language in Mesopotamia and Egypt. It is possible that the Egyptians decided to develop their own writing system after seeing how useful this invention is in practice. There is some evidence of the influence of Mesopotamia on the pre-dynastic culture of Egypt. This is the use of cylindrical seals and images of mythical beasts on the Narmer artifact. It is also quite possible that the development of writing in each territory proceeded in parallel. Basically, this was facilitated by the improvement of trade relations.

Writing hieroglyphs is time consuming and requires skill and knowledge. During the reign of the 1st Dynasty of Pharaohs (about 2900 BC), the ancient Egyptians developed a simplified writing system known as "hieratic". Signs in it were greatly simplified and applied to papyrus. The sphere of their application is religious and monumental architecture, accounting of expenses and revenues of the state. In the VII century. BC. in society, a "common language" was born, which was similar to hieratic writing and was used for artistic and economic texts.

Ancient hieroglyphs of Egypt

Construction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt

During the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty (305-330 BC), Egypt was under the rule of Greek rulers, whose lineage dates back to the liberator. Alexandria became the only city of the ancient world that could compete in grandeur and glory with Rome. Ptolemy I built the Great Library because he believed that Greek culture would be the greatest in the world and dreamed of combining Egyptian culture with Greek accomplishments. The mixing of cultures led to the emergence of new hieroglyphic signs, which only high priests possessed knowledge of. The language became more complicated, new codes and combinations were created, the meaning of which was available only to a select few.

Roman Amphitheater of Alexandria (Egypt)

The last entry on the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt

In 206 BC. an uprising took place on the territory of Upper Egypt. The strength of the Greek dynasty, which was quite unpopular with the Egyptian people, weakened. In order to maintain order, the government resorted to the help of the Roman Empire. And this strategy worked well enough until Cleopatra's luck changed and she was defeated at the Battle of Actium by Octavian (Emperor Augustus) in 30 BC. Egypt became a province of Rome. Citizens were imposed exorbitant taxes and even less autonomy than other territories.

In 391 A.D. Roman Emperor Theodosius ordered the closure of all pagan temples in Egypt. This, in fact, meant the destruction of the hieroglyphic language, which was used in religious ceremonies and in the construction of architectural monuments. The last hieroglyphs of the Ancient Egypt were used in writing the text in 394 BC.

There were over 5,000 ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Only about 700-800 were used in writing. The proportions of use are about the same as in the Chinese script. But what do we know about this ancient writing?

I will begin with the official part of the historical interpretation of this process and that modern history generally knows about deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Penetration into the history of Ancient Egypt for a long time was hindered by the barrier of Egyptian writing. Scientists have tried to read Egyptian hieroglyphs for a long time. They even had at their disposal the ancient textbook "Hieroglyphics", written in the 2nd century. n. e. Gorapollo, a native of Upper Egypt, and since the time of Herodotus it was known that the Egyptians used three types of writing: hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic. However, all attempts to overcome the "Egyptian letter" with the help of the works of ancient authors remained in vain.

In the study of this writing and in the deciphering of hieroglyphs, Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832) achieved the most outstanding results.

Rosetta stone- a slab of granodiorite, found in 1799 in Egypt near the small town of Rosetta (now Rashid), not far from Alexandria, with three texts, identical in meaning, engraved on it, including two in the ancient Egyptian language - inscribed in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Egyptian demotic writing, which is an abbreviated cursive script of the era of late Egypt, and one in ancient Greek. Ancient Greek was well known to linguists, and a comparison of the three texts served as a starting point for deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The text of the stone is a gratitude inscription, which in 196 BC. e. Egyptian priests addressed Ptolemy V to Epiphanes, the next monarch from the Ptolemaic dynasty. The beginning of the text: "To the new king who received the kingdom from his father" ... In the Hellenistic period, many similar documents within the Greek oecumene were distributed in the form of bi- or trilingual texts, which subsequently served linguists well.

The main obstacle in deciphering was the lack of understanding of the Egyptian writing system as a whole, so all private successes did not give any "strategic" result. For example, the Englishman Thomas Jung (1773–1829) was able to establish the sound meaning of the five hieroglyphic signs of the Rosetta stone, but this did not bring science one iota closer to deciphering the Egyptian writing. This unsolvable, as it seemed then, problem could be solved only by Champollion.

First of all, Champollion investigated and completely rejected Gorapollo's "Hieroglyphics" and all attempts at deciphering based on his concept. Gorapollo argued that Egyptian hieroglyphs are not sound, but only semantic signs, signs-symbols. But Champollion, even before Jung's discovery, came to the conclusion that among the hieroglyphs there were signs that convey sounds. Already in 1810, he expressed the opinion that the Egyptians could write foreign names with such phonetic signs. And in 1813 Champollion suggested that alphabetic characters were also used to convey the suffixes and prefixes of the Egyptian language.

He examines the royal name "Ptolemy" on the Rosetta stone and singles out 7 hieroglyphs-letters in it. Studying a copy of a hieroglyphic inscription on an obelisk originating from the Temple of Isis on the island of Phile, he reads the name of Queen Cleopatra. As a result, Champollion determined the sound meaning of five more hieroglyphs, and after reading the names of other Greco-Macedonian and Roman rulers of Egypt, he increased the hieroglyphic alphabet to nineteen characters.

He established in the course of his research and concluded that the Egyptians had a semi-alphabetic writing system, since they, like some other peoples of the East, did not use vowels in writing. And in 1824 Champollion published his main work - "An Outline of the Hieroglyphic System of the Ancient Egyptians." She became the cornerstone of modern Egyptology.

But look at these hieroglyphs and their phonemes:

Doesn't it seem strange to you that certain images are passed off as phonemes? It's not even a syllabic letter! Why is it so hard to depict sounds? You can depict a simple symbol and associate sound with it, as is the case with other peoples and cultures. But in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, it is precisely pictures, images.

Translation, decryption, and in my opinion a deep delusion or even delusion of Egyptologists can look

And from this not a step towards the Egyptologists can not do it! After all, all this is based on the authority of Champollion himself!

Take a look at this. This is a whole series of meaning, figurative writing. You can probably even say - this universal language that any bearer of reason can understand. Then the conclusion is whether we are reasonable that we still cannot read it. This is just my opinion. And this is a doubt about the method, where everything is based on phonetic comparisons of hieroglyphs from the early 19th century. I had it for a long time. Only now I decided to express it in this article.

It is possible that something technical is shown here.

Probably only the lazy did not hear about these technical hieroglyphs on the ceiling in one of the Egyptian temples

There are symbols here that look like flying machines, and more than one type of them, probably.

Stones will probably be thrown at me once again, that I am talking nonsense and everything has long been translated. Or maybe the codebreakers were pulling an owl onto the globe, working off their bread?

I do not want to completely incline everyone towards absolute forgery and delusions based on the works of Champollion. But it is worth considering whether everything is once again the way the Egyptologists tell us. After all, Napoleon went to Egypt for a reason, and it is possible that the Rosette stone is a simple fake. Moreover, the quality and size of the inscriptions on it does not correspond to the size of the hieroglyphs of the early kingdoms of Ancient Egnipt.

Egyptian hieroglyphs are perhaps one of the most widespread and popularized versions of ancient writing. There are many common misconceptions regarding Egyptian hieroglyphs, and sometimes ordinary people simply do not know this topic even in the most superficial way.

Therefore, we consider it quite relevant to tell briefly about the language of Egypt, some development trends, esoteric meanings of this language and the semantic elements of Egyptian culture in general.

History of appearance

In the beginning there was a word - this fact is known to many and from this fact it is not difficult to draw a conclusion about the high value of language. In each individual culture, languages have developed in a special way, but for the most part they have always been based on various magical or religious beliefs. They made language not just a means of communication, but a way of influencing reality.

There are a huge number of similar examples, for example modern alphabet Hebrew includes letters, each of which has a secret meaning. Chinese characters have not only direct, but also metaphorical meaning, and often the meaning of the word hidden in the hieroglyph indicates a deep understanding of the world and the wisdom of the people. In fact, almost every language (or group of languages) has a very interesting one.

From the very beginning, it should be noted that hieroglyphs are characteristic for many ancient civilizations.... In fact, if you look at the development of not only Egyptian, but also Chinese, and the Sumerian-Akkadian language and written language in particular, you can see many similarities.

In particular, the structure of the evolutionary development of these languages is almost identical, although there are differences in each variant, which are determined by the peculiarities of culture and perception.

In general, the hieroglyphs moved along an approximately identical path of development, from a picture image to a more sketchy one. Thus, at the initial stage, in the language where the hieroglyphic notation was used, only pictures were used that corresponded to the designated object.

For example, the word was actually written as a schematic representation of a man in profile, and the word woman was an identical variant. Further, the language (and written speech in particular) continues to develop and the hieroglyphs have various additional meanings and functions.

For example, if a name is written in hieroglyphs, then a hieroglyph "man" or "woman" is added after the word so that the reader can understand what gender this name belongs to.

How could they write down names in Egypt if only pictures were used that meant certain words? Here, another direction was applied to the development of written speech, which involved the use of various phonemes. Simply put, some hieroglyphs began to correspond to sounds.

Further, the Egyptian language moved towards systematizing and reducing the number of hieroglyphs.... In order to write down long texts, scientists considered it more expedient to use not a huge number of a wide variety of hieroglyphs, but to use phonetic writing and various clarifying elements that make it possible to understand in what sense a particular set of hieroglyphs should be read.

Over time, hieroglyphic writing becomes obsolete and changes in Egypt to more modern forms of the language.

Even during the period of the use of hieroglyphs, there was a so-called hieratic - a special way of writing used for papyrus texts(hieroglyphs were mainly used for wall painting) something like Egyptian cursive writing.

In addition, to the new era, demotic writing is developing, which eventually completely supplants hieroglyphs. If you look at the Egyptian texts performed by demotics, then outwardly they are practically indistinguishable from the Arabic script or similar versions of the written language.

Moreover, even a schematic demotic is based on Egyptian hieroglyphs.... It was just that over time, they simplified and became more schematic and easier to write alphabet symbols appeared.

Hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt with decoding in Russian

Traveling to Egypt, you can see the many souvenir alphabets sold by local merchants. In particular, near the pyramids and in other tourist-rich places, stylized papyri are offered, on which certain hieroglyphs and the corresponding meanings of the letters of the Latin alphabet are indicated.

Moreover, sometimes you can see a similar alphabet with a translation into Russian and actually learn how to spell words in hieroglyphs.

Of course, this looks a little strange, because n but it is unlikely that in Egypt they thought about adapting their own language to the Cyrillic or Latin alphabet... Nevertheless, there is still a rational meaning in such correspondences.

Indeed, in the Egyptian language, over time, indeed phonetic equivalents began to be used for some hieroglyphs, in other words, a certain part of the hieroglyphs, in addition to the direct meaning, began to be assigned an additional purely phonetic one.

Thus, it is possible to talk about the existence of the Egyptian alphabet. Although, of course, the scale of the Egyptian language did not correspond to the phonetic spectrum of the Cyrillic or Latin alphabet. The sounds had their own specifics, and some differed from the alphabet you were used to.

There is nothing surprising in this, such examples still exist. For example, in the languages of the Romance group, the sound s is practically not used, as well as any letter or defthong is not used to denote such a letter.

Thus and some sounds of the Egyptian language may be unusual for you, and some familiar sounds may be absent in this language.

Therefore, such alphabets of correspondences should be considered in a certain sense a convention... Although, as a hobby, you can really learn to write words in Egyptian hieroglyphs and, moreover, not only yourself, but also Egyptologists or other people who can read hieroglyphs, can understand your writing.

The correspondence of Russian letters to hieroglyphs can be seen in the picture.

The Egyptian alphabet uses 24 basic letters. Recall that this classification is to a certain extent arbitrary, since different hieroglyphs can be used for identical letters and sounds. However, there are the most common hieroglyphs that are used as the alphabet.

What do the symbols mean?

In addition to hieroglyphs, various Egyptian symbols are often better known. Many words that belonged to a religious cult could well be written from the constituent parts.... For example, the word Ra could consist of hieroglyphs mouth + arm bent at the elbow, which phonetically gave a combination of sounds r + a.

In addition, there was a separate hieroglyph for writing, which looked like the hieroglyph "man" but had a special headdress, we are talking about the hieroglyph pharaoh or king, which could additionally mean the supreme deity.

In addition to the indicated spelling options, there was also a religiously mystical version, which used the hieroglyph of the eye (something like the all-seeing eye) or the Sun to denote Ra, that is, there was also used a symbolic subtext, a metaphor. The hieroglyph of the eye could also denote Horus, since there was a common ujat symbol - the eye of Horus, which was also used as a protective amulet.

Mysticism in Egypt was developed in a very significant way and each of the symbols used had a powerful charge and deep meaning... The symbolism of the Egyptian religion is deep and multifaceted. In addition, one should not forget about the development of the purely practical aspect of the Egyptian, from which, in all likelihood, many more modern cults developed.

Egyptian symbolism is at the core of many modern religions. Thus, Egyptian symbols should be considered more ancient and, in a sense, the basis for modern mystical symbolism. Therefore, if you want to use powerful symbols and amulets, then we advise you to turn your own eyes towards Egyptian symbols.

Ankh- probably the most common symbol, which almost everyone knows about, is a cross whose upper part is ring-shaped, is a symbol of eternity and is often associated with the Breath of Life, which Egyptian deities endow the chosen people passing into the afterlife, should be generally interpreted as a symbol of eternal life, an auspicious sign.

Ba- is depicted as a hawk with a human head, symbolizes the soul, but in the Egyptian religion the presence of seven souls was attributed to man, for example, there was the doctrine of Ka, which is more like an eternal and individual soul.

Nevertheless, the Ba is a significant symbol, something like an astral shell in which a person can act even after mummification, as it was believed, the Ba can also be contained in statues that were erected for the pharaohs.

Shenou- looks like an oval, in fact, it is something like a rope ring, which has neither beginning nor end, it is a protective symbol, the name of the owner was inscribed in the shenu and the outer ring saved the owner of this name from adversity, you can now purchase an amulet representing shenu with your name inscribed.
Feather Maat- looks like a symbol of a feather and is an attribute of Maat, which is the embodiment of morality, balance and justice, this attribute indicates a commitment to justice and justice.
Udjat- the eye of Horus, is a symbol of healing and protection.
Ra- can be depicted as a circle with a point, or as a circle with symbolic rays, is in many ways the basis of Egyptian cosmogony and mythology, is the supreme deity, the source of all goods.

As a rule, such symbols were used not only in written speech, but also separately to perform any religious and mystical rituals or to create amulets.

How to use signs?

Trying to do Egyptian magic doesn't really require any lengthy research or effort. Many texts are translated and studied, and a significant part of the written monuments that have survived to this day are:

fortune-telling books
books of religious worship
books describing spells and performing various rituals

In addition, you can use purely practical elements of the teaching and perform certain ones. Most, of course, are inaccessible to the common man, but some involve only the use of spells and certain symbols.

Therefore, if you imagine the meaning of various symbols and can depict such signs, then you may well take advantage of the developments of the Egyptian mystics. Let us recall that this tradition is one of the oldest available to contemporaries and has a high potential.

In addition, it is advisable to use Egyptian signs for amulets. For example, it is always useful to use a protective amulet like Shenu with its own name. The rest of the signs also have a powerful positive charge and can be used both as a personal talisman and for any space, for example, for a home or office.

Among the most powerful signs are the feather of Maat, the eye of Horus and the Ankh. These signs have slightly different meanings, but they can also be used in combination, since each is generally favorable for almost every person, although we are talking about respectable people, since in Egypt significant attention was paid to morality and ethics.

Egyptian hieroglyphs, pictures of which will be given below, constitute one of the writing systems used almost 3.5 thousand years ago. In Egypt, it began to be used at the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. e. This system combined elements of phonetic, syllabic and ideographic styles. hieroglyphs were pictorial images supplemented by phonetic symbols. As a rule, they were carved into stones. However, Egyptian hieroglyphs could also be found on papyri and wooden sarcophagi. The pictures that were used in the drawing were similar to the objects that they represented. This greatly facilitated the understanding of what was written. Further in the article we will talk about what this or that hieroglyph meant.

The mystery of the appearance of signs

The history of the emergence of the system goes deep into the past. For a very long period, one of the most ancient monuments of writing in Egypt was the Narmer palette. It was believed that the earliest signs were depicted on it. However, German archaeologists in 1998 discovered three hundred clay tablets during excavations. They depicted proto-hieroglyphs. The signs date back to the 33rd century BC. e. The very first sentence is believed to be inscribed on a Second Dynasty seal from the tomb at Abydos of Pharaoh Seth-Peribsen. It should be said that initially images of objects and living beings were used as signs. But this system was quite complex, as it required certain artistic skills. In this regard, after a while, the images were simplified to the necessary contours. Thus, hieratic writing appeared. This system was used mainly by the priests. They made inscriptions on tombs and temples. The demotic (popular) system, which appeared somewhat later, was easier. It consisted of circles, arcs, lines. However, it was problematic to recognize the original characters in this letter.

Perfection of signs

The original Egyptian hieroglyphs were pictographic. That is, the words looked like pictorial pictures. Further, the semantic was created. With the help of ideograms, it was possible to write down separate abstract concepts. So, for example, the image of mountains could mean both part of the relief and a mountainous, foreign country. The image of the sun meant "day" because it shines only during the day. Subsequently, in the development of the entire system of Egyptian writing, ideograms played a significant role. Somewhat later, sound signs began to appear. In this system, more attention was paid not so much to the meaning of the word as to its sound interpretation. How many hieroglyphs are there in Egyptian writing? At the time of the New, Middle and Old Kingdoms, there were about 800 signs. During the Greco-Roman rule, there were already more than 6000 of them.

Classification

The problem of systematization remains unresolved to this day. Wallis Budge (English philologist and Egyptologist) was one of the first scholars to catalog Egyptian hieroglyphs. His classification was based on the external signs of signs. After him, in 1927, a new list was drawn up by Gardiner. His "Egyptian grammar" also included a classification of signs based on external features. But in his list the signs were divided into groups, which were denoted by Latin letters. Sequential numbers were assigned to the signs within the categories. Over time, the classification compiled by Gardiner began to be considered generally accepted. The database was replenished by adding new characters to the groups defined by them. Many signs subsequently discovered were additionally assigned alphabetic values after the numbers.

New codification

Simultaneously with the expansion of the list compiled on the basis of Gardiner's classification, some researchers began to suggest the incorrect distribution of hieroglyphs into groups. In the 1980s, a four-volume catalog of signs, separated by meaning, was published. Over time, this classifier also began to be rethought. As a result, in 2007-2008 there was a grammar compiled by Kurt. He revised Gardiner's four-volume edition and introduced a new division into groups. This work is undoubtedly very informative and useful in translation practice. But some researchers have doubts about whether the new codification will take root in Egyptology, since it also has its own shortcomings and flaws.

Modern approach to character coding

How is the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs carried out today? In 1991, when computer technologies were already sufficiently developed, the Unicode standard was proposed for encoding characters of various languages. The latest version contains the basic Egyptian hieroglyphs. These characters are in the range: U + 13000 - U + 1342F. Various new electronic catalogs continue to appear today. Decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphs into Russian is carried out using the graphic editor Hieroglyphica. It should be noted that new catalogs continue to appear to this day. Due to the large number of signs, they still cannot be completely classified. In addition, from time to time, researchers discover new Egyptian hieroglyphs and their meaning, or new phonetic designations of existing ones.

Direction of the display of signs

Most often, the Egyptians wrote in horizontal lines, usually from right to left. It was rare to find a direction from left to right. In some cases, the signs were placed vertically. In this case, they were always read from top to bottom. Nevertheless, despite the predominant direction from right to left in the writings of the Egyptians, for practical reasons in modern research literature, the inscription from left to right is accepted. The signs that depicted birds, animals, people were always turned towards the beginning of the line with their faces. The upper mark took precedence over the lower one. The Egyptians did not use sentence or word separators, meaning there was no punctuation. When writing, they tried to distribute calligraphic signs without spaces and symmetrically, forming rectangles or squares.

Inscription system

Egyptian hieroglyphs can be divided into two large groups. The first includes phonograms (sound signs), and the second - ideograms (semantic signs). The latter were used to denote a word or concept. They, in turn, are divided into 2 types: determinatives and logograms. Phonograms were used to denote sounds. This group consisted of three types of signs: three-consonant, two-consonant, and one-consonant. It is noteworthy that there is not a single image among the hieroglyphs. Thus, this writing is a consonant system, like Arabic or Hebrew. The Egyptians could read the text with all vowels, even if they were not inscribed. Each person knew exactly which sound between which consonants must be put when pronouncing a particular word. But the lack of vowel marks is a major problem for Egyptologists. For a very long period (almost the last two millennia), the language was considered dead. And today no one knows exactly how the words sounded. Thanks to philological research, it was possible, of course, to establish the approximate phonetics of many words, to understand the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs in Russian, Latin, and other languages. But this kind of work is today a very isolated science.

Phonograms

One-consonants formed the Egyptian alphabet. In this case, hieroglyphs were used to designate 1 The exact names of all one-consonant signs are unknown. The order of their following was worked out by scientists-Egyptologists. Transliteration is carried out using. If there are no corresponding letters or several of them are needed, then diacritical marks are used for designation. Two-consonant sounds are designed to convey two consonants. This type of hieroglyphs is quite common. Some of them are polyphonic (transmit several combinations). Three-consonant signs convey, respectively, three consonants. They are also quite widespread in writing. As a rule, the last two types are used with the addition of one-consonants, which partially or completely reflect their sound.

Ideogrammatic Egyptian hieroglyphs and their meaning

Logograms are symbols that depicted what they actually meant. For example, a drawing of the sun is both day and light, and the sun itself, and time.

For a more accurate understanding, the logogram was supplemented sound sign... Determinatives are ideograms that are intended to indicate grammatical categories in logographic writing. As a rule, they were placed at the end of words. The determinative served to clarify the meaning of what was written. However, he did not denote any words or sounds. Determinatives can have both figurative and direct meaning. For example, the Egyptian hieroglyph "eye" is not only the organ of vision itself, but also the ability to see and look. And a sign illustrating a papyrus scroll could not only denote a book or the scroll itself, but also have another abstract, abstract concept.

Use of signs

The decorative and rather formal character of the hieroglyphs determined their use. In particular, signs were used, as a rule, to inscribe sacred and monumental texts. In everyday life, a simpler hieratic system was used to create business and administrative documents, correspondence. But she, despite the rather frequent use, could not supplant the hieroglyphs. They continued to be used both during the Persian period and during the Greco-Roman rule. But I must say that by the 4th century there were few people who could use and understand this system.

Scientific research

Ancient writers became interested in hieroglyphs: Diodorus, Strabo, Herodotus. Gorapollo had a special authority in the field of the study of signs. All these writers emphatically argued that all hieroglyphs are picture writing. In this system, in their opinion, individual signs denoted whole words, but not letters or syllables. Researchers of the 19th century were also influenced by this thesis for a very long time. Without trying to scientifically confirm this theory, scientists deciphered the hieroglyphs, considering each of them as an element of pictography. The first to suggest the presence of phonetic signs was But, and he could not find a key to understanding them. Jean-François Champollion managed to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The historical merit of this researcher is that he abandoned the thesis of ancient writers and chose his own path. As a basis for his study, he accepted the assumption that Egyptian writing does not consist of conceptual, but phonetic elements.

Exploration of the Rosette Stone

This archaeological find was a black polished basalt slab. It was completely covered with inscriptions that were made in two languages. There were three columns on the slab. The first two were executed in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The third column was written in Greek, and it was thanks to its presence that the text on the stone was read. This was the honorary address of the priests sent to Ptolemy the Fifth Epiphanes for his coronation. In the Greek text, the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy were present on the stone. They also had to be in the Egyptian text. It was known that the names of the pharaohs were enclosed in cartouches or oval frames. That is why Champillon had no difficulty finding names in the Egyptian text - they clearly stood out from the rest of the characters. Subsequently, comparing columns with texts, the researcher became more and more convinced of the validity of the theory of the phonetic basis of symbols.

Some style rules

Aesthetic considerations were of particular importance in writing technique. On their basis, certain rules were created that limit the choice, direction of the text. Symbols could be written from right to left, or vice versa, depending on where they were used. Some signs were written in such a way as to be directed towards the reading person. This rule extended to many hieroglyphs, but the most obvious such limitation was when drawing symbols illustrating animals and people. If the inscription was located on the portal, then its individual signs turned to the middle of the door. A person who entered could thus easily read the symbols, since the text began with hieroglyphs located at a distance closest to him. As a result, not a single sign “showed ignorance” or turned its back on anyone. The same principle, in fact, can be observed when two people are talking.

conclusions

It should be said that, despite the outward simplicity of the elements of the writing of the Egyptians, their system of signs was considered quite complex. Over time, symbols began to fade into the background, and soon they were replaced by other ways of graphically expressing speech. The Romans and Greeks showed little interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs. With the adoption of Christianity, the system of symbols completely fell out of use. By 391, by order of the Byzantine emperor Theodosius the First Great, all pagan temples were closed. The last hieroglyphic record dates back to 394 (evidenced by archaeological finds on the island of Philae).

In deciphering the writing systems of Ancient Egypt, an important role was played by the inscriptions engraved on the Rosetta stone. This stone was found on June 15, 1799 by an officer of the French troops P. Bouchard during the construction of a fort near the Arab town of Rosetta, located in the western part of the Nile Delta. The stone was sent to the Egyptian Institute in Cairo. Since the French fleet was completely destroyed by the English fleet under the command of Admiral Nelson, as a result of which the communication of Napoleon's troops with France was interrupted, the French command decided to leave Egypt, handing over the found ancient Egyptian monuments, including the Rosetta Stone, to the British.

The Rosetta stone is 114.4 cm high and 72.3 cm wide. It is a fragment of a high stele. Three inscriptions are engraved on the face of the stone: in the upper part - a hieroglyphic text, in the middle - a demotic text, below - a text in Ancient Greek. Basically, 32 lines of demotic text have survived. Only the last fourteen lines have survived from the hieroglyphic text, but they have all fourteen chipped off on the right side, twelve on the left. Hieroglyphic inscriptions on the stone go from right to left, since the heads of people and animals look to the right. Thus, the endings of two lines (thirteenth and fourteenth) remained unchanged until our time, which made it possible to decipher the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt.
It can be assumed that the hieroglyphic and demotic texts are written in the same language. It is also assumed that the hieroglyphic text also had 32 lines, like the demotic one, which makes it possible for researchers to find groups of graphemes in the hieroglyphic text that are in lines of text at almost the same distance as there are between groups of syllabic graphemes in lines of demotic text. Comparison of these groups of hieroglyphs with the lexemes of the demotic text would make it possible to determine the phonetic meanings of the hieroglyphs, as well as to clarify the phonetic meanings of the graphemes of demotic writing. Until now, it is believed that most of the hieroglyphs are ideograms, that is, most researchers of the culture of Ancient Egypt are of the opinion that a significant part of the hieroglyphs are not phonetic.

Deciphering demotic writing by T. Boshevsky and A. Tentov

In 2005, Macedonian scientists T. Boshevsky and A. Tentov presented to the international scientific community a work that was the result of research carried out within the framework of the project “Deciphering the Mean Text of the Rosetta Stone”, which was carried out with the support of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003, when starting their research, Macedonian scholars were convinced that the language of the middle text of the Rosetta Stone, which they were going to study, should definitely have the characteristics of the Slavic language. Macedonian scholars decided that since the ancient Slavic dynasty of the Ptolemies, whose homeland was ancient Macedonia, ruled ancient Egypt for a long time, then it was necessary to decipher the demotic writing based on the Slavic languages (http://rosetta-stone.etf.ukim.edu.mk).
Their hypothesis was confirmed in the results of the research that Macedonian scientists came to. The results of their research were the identification and sound identification of syllabic graphemes of the middle text of the Rosetta Stone, denoting 27 consonants and 5 vowels (see Fig. 1). The language of the middle text of the Rosetta Stone is Slavic.

Rice. 1. Table of syllabic graphemes identified by Boshevsky and Tentov

Syllabic signs were also written one above the other. When reading the middle text, you must first read the upper grapheme, and then the lower one. However, Macedonian scholars did the opposite, which led to a misunderstanding of the meaning of the middle text of the Rosetta Stone. In one of the lines of the demotic text, one can read: “But what is my God? - Reality and bde! Reveal What He Is ”.
The Macedonian researchers themselves have defined the language of the middle text of the Rosetta Stone as a Proto-Slavic language. They also came to the conviction: there is no need to look for the complete identity of the three texts, since it is impossible to find it.

Deciphering the hieroglyphic writing of Ancient Egypt

Modern science supports the theory that two scripts - hieroglyphic and demotic - were used to write state act on the Rosetta stone in one - the ancient Egyptian - language. Thus, when writing the middle text and the text at the top of the Rosetta Stone, the same language was used. Macedonian scholars T. Boshevsky and A. Tentov proved that when writing the middle text of the Rosetta stone, one of the ancient Slavic languages... Therefore, when deciphering the hieroglyphic text, one of the Slavic languages should also be used.

Apparently, the hieroglyphic text of the Rosetta Stone also had 32 lines, like the demotic one, which makes it possible to find groups of hieroglyphs in the hieroglyphic text that are in the lines of the hieroglyphic text at the same distances from one group to another as the distances between groups of graphemes, the phonetic meanings of which no doubt in the demotic text. Comparison of these groups of hieroglyphs with the lexemes of the inscription on demotics would make it possible to determine the phonetic meanings of the hieroglyphs.
Decryption was started by comparing the end of 32 lines of the middle text (see Fig. 2) with the end of 14 lines of the hieroglyphic text (see Fig. 3).
The result of transliteration of the end of 32 lines of the middle text, carried out by T. Boshevsky and A. Tentov, is shown in Fig. 4. The phonetic meanings of many graphemes are determined by them not quite accurately. The syllable "ON" is used quite inappropriately.

After comparing these two segments of the inscriptions, it became possible to establish the phonetic meanings of several hieroglyphs. It has been established that the lexeme "NATSZHOY" in a segment of text on demotics (see Fig. 5) cannot be matched in a segment of a hieroglyphic text.
Continuing to compare sections of the two texts, I determined the phonetic meanings of several dozen hieroglyphs. Later, a syllabary of ancient Egyptian writing was created:

Rice. 2. Drawing the end of 32 lines of middle text

It is found that the sign ||| stands for plural. Before it, a member of a sentence ends with -i or -s. In rare cases, this sign is placed at the beginning of a word. It has also been established that if there is a sign next to a hieroglyph | , then the vowel sound of the hieroglyph is unstressed. Sign | next to a hieroglyph, denoting only one vowel sound, speaks of stress on this vowel. If after the hieroglyph denoting a consonant sound with a vowel sound, there is a hieroglyph denoting a vowel sound, then the vowel sound of the first hieroglyph is not pronounced.
The hieroglyphic inscription of the Rosetta Stone is read from right to left.
Line 1: ... (Str) iltsy in the wounded we are tzem and tsenim, and we have two legs tzati ...
Line 2: ... The most dtsanya in Adtsu da Dtsin minawali. Don't (t) dtsani Dtssyaba! Tzemy sadce ts gods ... Nitsyae early, we early, hell tse ... and we ...
Line 3:… (With rays) Mi Sanats Badtszh dtsvuima and mynya live. Drunk, sweat not yima. Tsimmy dtsanimya themselves ttsanidtsayim, - dtspotzaimy! Edzha nadtszzhamya voim ...
Line 4: ... Tshichie dtsit dtsig (no ||| - Auth.), But we stink, dtsdaby somavets, ganadz ... We are not celimis Tseba: we are kalym pits. Zzhve Tseng Eyi. Yo Nimya tsganadz dtsynytshi dzmyya, so that Tsem abye ...
Line 5:… (We will save) we de velytstsse dtsanimya, reshi Yo runemas. Zsarunedz is lying to dtsam. Dtsdzhim dtsyo may dtsyaya zhavadtsya. I'm okay! Tzam nice sweat, and tse we drink yo! Bloody ...
6 line: ... Nie dtsyayy ttsmyyama baeamy. Tse zzh ani ni e Yoa. The King's Tabe (Nadrtsiy E Dztsanacey) (Nadrtius E) Yayyo Yaghnya Nazzha (Nadrtius E) ...
Line 7: ... Bogmi new - treyo tsatin. Ocei nasa - Tsva. Dtsim bo Dtsvu, dtsaniim, appreciate, vaviim, nadymaeami, be Bozzhimy voi vuba. Netzim dzzi, buy imm. Yonni tsikav, bai im tsvyya tsuzhae: "E we are the Tsar's sanamas (Nadrtsy E) ...".
Line 8: Dezzescha zsesya nam tsutsa. God knows how not tsti, bo not dzziti oyui. Sabot control. Eetsya tsushua boyadetsi? - Bo nasayim! "Tsezzhai yone to you ... Badtsem, one hundred dtsim, dtsanim", - they seem to you ...
Line 9: ... Thinks: you love, rutzes, - thinks. Ie batsu: not piedtsi mav nor ddsavoya ... Tshya tsdna tsitsdtsimmya. And we are tzdaby, dtsdaby this shyya ё may dtssezzhadtsa nitsnomma nagama avi wobba, night of darkness ...
Line 10: ... “There’s no groan, no breath. Nazzh kirei (hence - CAIRO - Auth.) Tzade runs. Dtse we avttsymy tsa dzim, - bayime. - Dztsamyaya, stutho, prostrate. Razhdennova roar dcebe tshaim, - Boziavu, we are Yayo alive. Tsyo beggars not be, mutsayinivayaya. " And ye Dtsya Ruts Summ ...
Line 11: "... Yaye Niva". Vuzze Bayim to another Bodziyim. Tsetzraim, tstyvoi bo batie-dzhimy tsuzhatsi, - no sari e va Dtsyn, in Atse. Neither tswusamaeammma wutzta tsei. Ino Nitsraiim, you are a witch! And on neyeim wu Raimvo (ve) ...
12th line: ... Nartsiy E Dztsanacey) badts no tsatshani. Vostshiyim, adtsbayim dza scha, we will appreciate children living tshi dtsynets. Neither tsamma is alive. Wash yay botsdtsy. Godmi is the new face of Muzzhaimisa. Badz. Tsbadcizzh her we. And we, and howl ...
Line 13: ... Badz on sazzo We. We give it my dtsya. Ttsymi stench, live ttsymmy. Iimu mavim dati, wife. Va ata both badts dtsanitsy we are Tsibe. Imy tsuzim vumyon, for Nitsraiim nitsa dtsani muzhi muzzha ttsymmyya. Tse zzhi nyo buggy ...
Line 14: ... Zzhivi, Zhzheno, nni ... Mavisa is great: a tsar without him. Tzebe, we shall revive, dtsaninny. Bo tsedtsi bagmi novima - tsudzi dtszeioa! Tabe, Tsar (Nartsiy E Dztsanacey), badts.

Translation

We honor and appreciate the injuries of the shooters, they get on their feet ...

2. The very veneration of the Father and the Son has passed. There is no praise for You. We honor the sun with the gods. We bow and wounded early, but in the afternoon ...
3. And the Sun of God lives with His rays. Satisfies the hungry with His grace. We ourselves are imbued with these praises, saving our souls. If our warriors ...
4. 3000 honors these, but we will thrust them in order to wash them away, to drive them away. We pierce, not aiming at You: for the sake of particles we pierce. Her Son lives! His Name will drive away the offspring of Satan, so that with Him ...
5. We will preserve our reverence for Her, we will preserve Her sayings in the scriptures. The Antichrist himself lies. This creature considers this to be a stranger. Destroy her! He himself gives this poison to drink, and - here we are drinking it!
6. They are not the snakes mentioned. After all, those do not belong to her. Yours, King, who called Her the Sun, we see living faces! Yours, Who called Her the Lamb.
7. Three hundred new gods. Ours is a Dyad. We honor the Two, we honor, we appreciate, we revere, we magnify, being God's fishers. Tell everyone, tell everyone. Get people interested, talk about your strangers: "We are the sons of the Tsar, Who called Her the Sun" ...
8. This brainchild is alien to us. Do not honor the new gods, because they are disgusting. Remember the covenants. How can you be afraid, because we honor our own? “They are alien to you. We see that we honor, we honor, "they will tell you ...
9. Mnits: "Fall in love, ruthenes." But I see: neither my own speech is pouring - another revered one ... And that we honor, and by that we show devotion. So that this family was tormented by the spirits of malice - both. Night darkness ...
10. “She doesn't moan, she breathes. Our ruler runs from behind. Here we are sheep for him, - we tell. - And themselves, jokingly, - prostrate. We are trying to calm the crying baby. A child who escaped torture and death itself. " Rus was ...
11. ... Her Niva. Already we speak to other gods. Upper Rome, your gods are alien spirits, not kings in the Father and the Son. Nobody hears the verb of their mouth. O Lower Rome, you are the horror itself! And in him, in Rome ...
12. ... Who called Her the Sun, countless are visible. Let us honor, give thanks, appreciate the resurrected thousands of sons for this. Not yourself raised. We are only gods in it. Other faces strengthen our faith. We see and we will see it again. Both we and the warriors ...
13. “... We see in the sun. We give it to them. They are revered as saints during their lifetime. I will order him to give it to his wife. We see the reverence for these two. But after all, they acquired a stranger's mind, and the men of Lower Rome worship only the revered husband. After all, they are not gods "...
14. Alive, Zheno ... The tsars have already said: this tsar is outside her. She praises you, the Risen One. After all, these new gods are alien to her. We see you, the King, who called Her the Sun.

In fig. 6 we read the inscription: “Tsen, we are sick of tsiliva. (New column) Tsce nami wani. Litsa they vytsetshi abedtsili ". Translation: “The Son Healing the Sick. They are with us. They promised to carve their image ”.

So, everything suggests that the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt is a Slavic syllabic writing.
A.T. Fomenko and G.V. Nosovsky several years ago formulated a hypothesis according to which the archaeological and written history of "Ancient" Egypt is only the medieval history of the African inheritance of the Great Horde Empire, which developed as a result of the colonization of the territories of Eurasia and Africa by the Slavs and Turks ...
In parallel with the colonization, the mission of the Church was carried out, because “Ancient” Egypt was a Christian country. In fig. 7 you see a linen shirt with a Christian cross embroidered on it, in which one of the pharaohs was buried. Pharaoh also wore gloves. Gloves, as we know, are a piece of clothing that was worn only in the Middle Ages.

Rice. 7. The shirt in which one of the "Egyptians" was buried, along with a glove.

T-shaped Christian crosses were often depicted on the bas-reliefs of Egyptian temples (see Fig. 8). The T-shaped cross is also depicted on the veil of Queen Elena Voloshanka

Thus, we can conclude that A.T. Fomenko and G.V. Nosovsky were right.
It is still believed that most of the hieroglyphs are ideograms, that is, most researchers of the culture of "Ancient" Egypt are of the opinion that a significant part of the hieroglyphs are not phonetic, but the results of deciphering the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt indicate that the hieroglyphic writing is Slavic syllabic writing. You cannot see ideograms in hieroglyphs, since in each ideogram, if you wish, you can see a lot of semantic meanings. For example, the honored Egyptologist Shabas translates one of the hieroglyphs as "hyena." And no less honored researcher of Egypt Brugsch believes that this hieroglyph has the semantic meaning of "lion".
Such scientific research has been going on for two centuries ...

See: Quirke S. and Andrews C. Rosetta Stone: Facsimile Drawing with an Introduction and Translations. - New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1989.
Desroches-Noblecourt Christiane. Life and Death of a Pharaoh Tutankhamen. - London, Penguin Books, 1963 .-- S. 270.
Medieval facial sewing. Byzantium, Balkans, Russia. Exhibition catalog. XVIII International Congress of Byzantinists. Moscow, August 8-15, 1991 - Moscow. Ministry of Culture of the USSR. State museums Moscow Kremlin. 1991 .-- S. 60.
See: Nosovskiy G.V. Rus and Rome. Slavic-Turkic conquest of the world. Egypt / G.V. Nosovsky, A.T. Fomenko. 3rd ed., Rev. And add. - M .: Astrel, AST; Poligrafizdat, 2010 .-- P. 317.

Welcome to the Russian-Egyptian dictionary. Please write the word or phrase you want to check in the text box on the left.

Recent changes

Glosbe is home to thousands of dictionaries. We provide not only dictionary Russian-Ancient Egyptian, but dictionaries for every existing pairs of languages - online and free. Visit the home page of our website to choose from the available languages.

Translation Memory

Glosbe dictionaries are unique. On Glosbe you can check not only translations into English or Ancient Egyptian: we also provide examples of usage by showing dozens of examples of translated sentences containing translated phrases. This is called "translation memory" and is very useful for translators. You can see not only the translation of the word, but also how it behaves in the sentence. Our translation memories come mostly from parallel corpuses that were made by humans. This translation of sentences is a very useful addition to dictionaries.

Statistics

Currently we have 445 phrases translated.

Cooperation

Help us in creating the largest Russian-Egyptian dictionary online. Just login and add a new translation. Glosbe is a unified project and anyone can add (or remove) translations. It makes our dictionary Ancient Egyptian Russian real, as it is created by native speakers people, that uses language for every day. You can also be sure that any dictionary error will be corrected quickly, so you can rely on our data. If you find an error or you can add new data, please do so. Thousands of people will be grateful for this.

You should know that Glosbe is not filled with words, but with ideas of what those words mean. Thanks to this, by adding one new translation, dozens of new translations are created! Help us develop Glosbe dictionaries and see how your knowledge is helping people around the world.

The writing system of Ancient Egypt is the most famous hieroglyphic writing system.

The decoding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, carried out in the 19th century by Jean-Francois Champollion, made it possible to lift the veil of secrets over the history of ancient Egyptian society.

From pictography to consonantism

The system of ancient Egyptian writing appeared at the end of the 4th millennium BC. In a tomb dating back to the XXXIII century BC, scientists in 1998 discovered as many as three hundred tablets covered with primitive hieroglyphs. This find is today considered the most ancient example of Egyptian writing.

The very first hieroglyphs were just visual images of simple objects and concepts: the sun, bull, mountains, etc. Later, these same drawings began to depict abstract concepts, the spectrum of which was very wide.

hieroglyphs of ancient egypt

Thus, the sign of the sun could mean "day", since the sun shines only during the day; the sign of the mountains denoted a foreign state, because it was located beyond the mountains. This system is called ideography and is a step up from simple drawings.

Even later, the hieroglyphs underwent another semantic transformation. This time, they began to denote not the ideas associated with the image, but the consonants included in the name of the object. Some hieroglyphs designated the first consonant in a word, others - two or three consonants.

It is curious that the development of ancient Egyptian writing obeys the same logic as the writing of languages related to Egyptian - Semitic: only consonants were subject to designation, the main ones between them were not transmitted in any way. The Arabic, Hebrew, Ethiopian and Phoenician alphabets are built on the same principle.

Rules for writing hieroglyphs

As in other areas of art and culture, the Egyptians developed a system of strict canons in writing.

In linear writing of hieroglyphs, the line went most often from left to right (for comparison, in other Semitic languages, words and sentences are written from right to left);
Images of people and animals are always turned to face the beginning of the line;
They tried to fit a group of hieroglyphs into a square, while the upper signs were to be read first, and then the lower ones;
Determinatives (signs denoting grammatical categories) were placed after the main hieroglyph or in front of it, depending on this, the meaning of what was written changed.

Hieratic and demotic writing

Classical hieroglyphs played a largely decorative role. They covered the walls of buildings, sculptures and columns. Also, classical hieroglyphs were used to write sacred texts on papyrus. For everyday needs, a different writing was required, a simpler one, and the Egyptians subsequently developed such. This is a hieratic letter.

hieratic letter photo

Initially, it was a form of cursive writing, but then the features of the use of signs appeared: some were combined into ligatures, others were omitted for simplicity. Later, a demotic system grew out of this system - an even more simplified and convenient writing system.

Decoding Egyptian hieroglyphs

As already mentioned, the honor of solving the mystery of hieroglyphs belongs to Jean-François Champollion, a French researcher. This work was not easy. We can say that Champollion was lucky: he got his hands on the Rosetta Stone, containing the same text in Egyptian and Greek; the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra in it were, according to tradition, surrounded by a cartouche.

Reading Greek and Egyptian words in cartouches laid the foundation for the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Egyptian signs in this case denoted consonants (phonetic notation). The Rosetta Stone contained text from the late Hellenistic era.

Rosetta stone photo

Later, Champollion discovered the names of the pharaohs Ramses and Thutmose, written according to the same phonetic principle. Thanks to this, it became clear that the phonetic principle was used by the Egyptians long before the conquest of Egypt by the Greeks.

Subscribe to news

Tourists who come to modern Egypt often find it hard to believe that this very land, where many hotels are now built, and noisy merchants impose their goods, was once the cradle of an interesting culture. The writing of Ancient Egypt to this day intrigues researchers with unsolved mysteries.

Three systems

In ancient Egypt, three writing systems were used at once: in addition to the well-known hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic writing were also used. None of the types of writing replaced the others, all of them were used for many centuries. However, the main type of Egyptian writing is considered to be hieroglyphics - simply because more examples of it have survived to this day, since hieroglyphs were usually knocked out on stones, which are much better preserved than papyri.

In the religion of the ancient Egyptians, there was the goddess of writing, Sishat, which suggests that writing was of great importance to people at that time. In addition, the god Thoth patronized the letter. Scribes carefully monitored the purity of written speech and protected it from the influence of colloquial speech. Of course, the living language still changed over time, but in writing this process is much slower than in oral speech. This applies primarily to conservative hieroglyphics, which were used to write sacred, religious texts.

In the traditional sense, Egyptian writing is a figurative writing, supplemented by phonetic characters. The system took shape at the turn of the third and fourth millennia BC. The earliest examples of Egyptian writing - the so-called "proto-hieroglyphs" - were found on clay tablets in the tomb of a pre-dynastic ruler. Scientists believe that these tablets date back to the XXXIII century BC.

At first, the writing was pictographic - miniature images of objects were used. But over time, the meanings of the drawings began to expand, and the letter received the status of idiomatic (semantic). For example, the Sun symbol no longer denoted a heavenly body, but also the time of day when the Sun shines, that is, day. Even later, signs appeared that denote not the meaning of a word, but the sounds of which it consists.

Initially, there were about 800 hieroglyphs, but already during the Greco-Roman rule in Egypt, their number reached six thousand. Hieroglyphs were used primarily for writing sacred texts and inscriptions on monuments. In everyday life, a more convenient and faster hieratic writing was used. Hieroglyphics gradually fell into decay. With the adoption of Christianity, very few people remained who knew how to use this complex system. And when the pagan temples were closed, the hieroglyphic writing finally fell into decay.

Hieratic writing

Writing, or rather, drawing classical hieroglyphs took time and concentration. Therefore, already during the reign of the first dynasty, hieratic writing appeared - a kind of cursive writing. Fundamentally close to hieroglyphics, such a letter had its own characteristics. For example, texts were always written from right to left (vertical writing was practiced only at first).

At first, only the appearance of the signs differed from traditional hieroglyphs, due to the speed of writing and the use of a special brush for this. In the future, the ways of using signs have changed. This letter was used to write documents, texts on medicine, mathematics, religion. In short, the scope of application of cursive writing was very wide. However, only a few samples of texts written in this way have survived to this day - this is due to the fact that they were written mainly on papyrus or leather, that is, materials that are not preserved at all as well as the stone used to apply hieroglyphs.

Hieratic was not as conservative a style as hieroglyphics, therefore, from era to era, the ways of drawing signs and their form changed. This makes it easy to date the finds by determining to what time they belong.

In the 7th century BC, hieratic was replaced by another form of Egyptian cursive, which was called demotic. For the time of Greco-Roman rule, the widespread use of the Greek letter became characteristic. This led to the fact that gradually hieratics fell into decay: at first, the sphere of use of this type of writing began to be limited only to religious texts, and then the writing fell out of use altogether.

Demotics

used for over a thousand years, starting in the seventh century BC. The name of this type of writing is of Greek origin and is translated as "folk writing". Signs were written horizontally from right to left. Compared to hieratic, the number of ligatures was increased, as well as words for which alphabetic characters were used. The number of the characters themselves was also reduced to 270. The first experiments on the transmission of vowel sounds appeared in demotics, and signs were used to denote consonant sounds.

Using demotic writing was, perhaps, simple, but codebreakers faced serious difficulties trying to decipher ancient Egyptian letters. Almost every sign had several meanings and several spellings, which greatly complicates deciphering.

At first, demotic writing was used for domestic purposes, as well as for writing business or legal documents. Later, in the era of the Ptolemies, the letter became widespread, it was used to write a variety of texts on various topics.

Over time, the letter gradually fell out of use: in the Roman period, only Greek was used to write official texts. There are written monuments where combinations of Greek letters with demotic writing are used, and later demotic is out of use.

What do the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt mean?

The reading of the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt would have remained a mystery to mankind if at the beginning of the 19th century, the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) had not translated the entry into and compiled a system of Egyptian writing.

The emergence of ancient hieroglyphs in Egypt

Deciphering the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt

Influence of Mespotamia on the writing of Ancient Egypt

Ancient hieroglyphs of Egypt

Construction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt

Roman Amphitheater of Alexandria (Egypt)

The last entry on the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt

History of appearance

There are a huge number of such examples, for example, the modern Hebrew alphabet includes letters, each of which has a secret meaning. Chinese hieroglyphs have not only direct, but also metaphorical meaning, and often the meaning of the word hidden in the hieroglyph indicates a deep understanding of the world and the wisdom of the people. In fact, almost every language (or group of languages) has a very interesting one.

In general, the hieroglyphs moved along an approximately identical path of development, from a picture image to a more sketchy one. Thus, at the initial stage, in the language where the hieroglyphic notation was used, only pictures were used that corresponded to the designated object.

For example, if a name is written in hieroglyphs, then a hieroglyph "man" or "woman" is added after the word so that the reader can understand what gender this name belongs to.

Over time, hieroglyphic writing becomes obsolete and changes in Egypt to more modern forms of the language.

In addition, to the new era, demotic writing is developing, which eventually completely supplants hieroglyphs. If you look at the Egyptian texts performed by demotics, then outwardly they are practically indistinguishable from the Arabic script or similar versions of the written language.

Moreover, even a schematic demotic is based on Egyptian hieroglyphs.... It was just that over time, they simplified and became more schematic and easier to write alphabet symbols appeared.

Hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt with decoding in Russian

Moreover, sometimes you can see a similar alphabet with a translation into Russian and actually learn how to spell words in hieroglyphs.

Thus, it is possible to talk about the existence of the Egyptian alphabet. Although, of course, the scale of the Egyptian language did not correspond to the phonetic spectrum of the Cyrillic or Latin alphabet. The sounds had their own specifics, and some differed from the alphabet you were used to.

Thus and some sounds of the Egyptian language may be unusual for you, and some familiar sounds may be absent in this language.

The correspondence of Russian letters to hieroglyphs can be seen in the picture.

The Egyptian alphabet uses 24 basic letters. Recall that this classification is to a certain extent arbitrary, since different hieroglyphs can be used for identical letters and sounds. However, there are the most common hieroglyphs that are used as the alphabet.

What do the symbols mean?

Mysticism in Egypt was developed in a very significant way and each of the symbols used had a powerful charge and deep meaning. The symbolism of the Egyptian religion is deep and multifaceted. In addition, one should not forget about the development of the purely practical aspect of the Egyptian, from which, in all likelihood, many more modern cults developed.

Ankh- probably the most common symbol, which almost everyone knows about, is a cross whose upper part is ring-shaped, is a symbol of eternity and is often associated with the Breath of Life, which Egyptian deities endow the chosen people passing into the afterlife, should be generally interpreted as a symbol of eternal life, an auspicious sign.

Shenou- looks like an oval, in fact, it is something like a rope ring, which has neither beginning nor end, it is a protective symbol, the name of the owner was inscribed in the shenu and the outer ring saved the owner of this name from adversity, you can now purchase an amulet representing shenu with your name inscribed.
Feather Maat- looks like a symbol of a feather and is an attribute of Maat, which is the embodiment of morality, balance and justice, this attribute indicates a commitment to justice and justice.
Udjat- the eye of Horus, is a symbol of healing and protection.
Ra- can be depicted as a circle with a point, or as a circle with symbolic rays, is in many ways the basis of Egyptian cosmogony and mythology, is the supreme deity, the source of all goods.

As a rule, such symbols were used not only in written speech, but also separately to perform any religious and mystical rituals or to create amulets.

How to use signs?

fortune-telling books
books of religious worship
books describing spells and performing various rituals

In addition, it is advisable to use Egyptian signs for amulets. For example, it is always useful to use a protective amulet like Shenu with its own name. The rest of the signs also have a powerful positive charge and can be used both as a personal talisman and for any space, for example, for a home or office.

(ending)

Since the time of Clement of Alexandria, "hieroglyphs" have become the technical term for ancient Egyptian writing. Herodotus and the Greek version of the Rosetta inscription speaks of γράμματα ιερά - this term is a translation of the Egyptian in the corresponding place in the hieroglyphic part of the same inscription, already known to us "the letter of the word of God." Here, another letter used by the Egyptians at that time is called in Greek γράμματα έγχώρια, in Egyptian - "letter of letters", which fully corresponds to γράμματα έπνδτολογραφικα Clement. This font, extremely italic, was used for everyday purposes, we now call, together with Herodotus, demotic. Clement also speaks of a third, intermediate letter - hieratic, meaning by it italic writing of more ancient eras, which was in use for everyday needs before the appearance of the demotic one. Due to this, for the monumental type of inscriptions he uses not γράμματα ίερά, but γράμματα ίερογλυφικά - carved sacred letters, in contrast to ίερατικά, which were written. Despite the inaccuracy of this terminology, in science it retained itself as delimiting two really sharply different types of Egyptian italics.

Hieroglyphic writing of Ancient Egypt

All three types of Egyptian writing, with their varieties, do not represent anything significantly different and relate to each other in approximately the same way as our type, handwritten and stenographic. Their ancestor was the ideographic writing characteristic of primitive peoples, in which thoughts are still connected with images of objects, and not words or sounds. Until recently, such an origin of Egyptian writing could only be assumed a priori and partly guessed about it by the composition of signs or remnants - already during the III and IV dynasties, from the monuments of which Egyptologists could then trace the Egyptian writing, the font had the same character as in classic time Egypt. Since the discovery of prehistoric necropolises by Amelino, Flinders Petrie, Morgan and others, science has received monuments that provide access to the study of the beginnings of Egyptian writing.

Excavations during the last three years of the last century in the center of the Upper Egyptian kingdom - Hierakonpole - discovered objects that can rightfully be called the most ancient historical monuments of history, art and writing of Egypt; These are the so-called slate plates with a round recess for rubbing paint and with relief images. One of them depicts a hunt, the other depicts fantastic animals with long necks and various animals, the third depicts a procession of prisoners and defeated bodies on the wreckage, the fourth depicts a battlefield with the bodies of enemies devoured by birds of prey and lions. This is followed by fragments with reliefs of a bull striking a defeated Egyptian, here the banners with the coats of arms of five nomes, stylized in the form of hands, hold a rope; on the reverse side, again, a striking bull and a jagged cartouche with the image of a lion and vessels inside. A whole collection of such cartouches is found on a single London slate plate, and here above each of them are also placed a falcon and other animals with hoes; the reverse side of this plate gives an image of both animals and the forest. Undoubtedly, here we have symbolic pictures, similar, for example, to the Mexican ones and representing not so much a specific image of an event as its description using the means available then. If already in the image of a hunt we find the beginnings of ideographism - at the head of the hunters is a warrior with a banner-coat of arms, a fantastic two-headed bull and a conventional image of a building stand aside, then on the subsequent discs symbolism and ideographism gradually completely supplant real images. The bull depicts the king, the banners of the nomes holding the rope with which the enemy is tied - the regions that were under his command or in alliance with him, the jagged ovals - the walls of the fortress; the animals sitting on them with hoes are allied nomes, destroying these fortresses. As for the images inside these ovals, we have before us the most ancient hieroglyphs denoting the names of fortresses. Thus, the need to depict proper names was already realized, and this was an incentive for the transition of Egyptian writing to the second stage of development, when images began to convey not only thought, but also sound, that is, phonetism appears next to ideographism. Only a few peoples have risen to this level. But for a long time phoneticism played an insignificant, subordinate role.

We notice his movement forward on the clubs and the plate of the kings of the time of the unification of Egypt. One stone mace from Hierakonpolis depicts the triumph of the loosening of the earth. The king himself is present with a hoe in his hands, his name is written phonetically above him in two characters - a star and a scorpion, above are the gallows with hanging symbols of the Egyptians and foreigners. But the most characteristic monument of this period is the famous Hierakonpol disc of the king, whose name is depicted by a fish and a drill and is conventionally read as Narmer. This plate symbolically represents the conquest of one of the regions of the Delta by the Upper Egyptian king. On one side, a king in the crown of Upper Egypt hits a representative of this region with a mace; his name is depicted here in the form of the hieroglyphs of a harpoon and a lake. Above is the falcon - the symbol of the patron god of the king and Egypt - the Mountain holds the head by the rope, sticking out of six lotus leaves - an indication of 6,000 defeated enemies. At the very bottom there are two defeated enemies with designations placed near them: near the first is a jagged quadrangle with a sign inside - obviously, the name of the fortress that this defeated figure personifies. On the other side of the plate, the king is depicted, accompanied by a vizier with a writing instrument and a servant carrying sandals, in the crown of the Delta walks along the victory field, in front of him are four standard-bearers with the coats of arms of the nomes subordinate to him; further - two rows of decapitated enemies - at the top of the hieroglyphs; below is an image of two Egyptians linking two fantastic beasts with long necks; at the very bottom, the bull symbolizing the king destroys the fortress, depicted in the form of a jagged oval with a sign - a name inside and in the form of a defeated Egyptian symbolizing it. So, we already have a whole chronicle of victory, written with pictography mixed with phonetic hieroglyphs. Here, next to our own names - a king, a fortress, a conquered nome, we see common words written in hieroglyphs, for example, “vizier”, “service”, as well as the numeral 1000. The relief on the mace of the same Narmer, representing his coronation or celebration of his anniversary. Here again the standards of the nomes, again the vizier, again the numbers. Thus, by the time of the unification of Egypt, his letter was almost complete, so far it was used in a modest size. On the ivory plates that have come down from the time of Mina (Menes) and depicting the events of his reign, we already see not only symbolic designations and individual hieroglyphic signs, but also whole lines written phonetically, although still incomprehensible to us, but testifying that the hieroglyphic system was already at this time ready.

Sample of hieroglyphic writing of Ancient Egypt

At the end of the archaic period, written monuments also appear from mere mortals. The earliest marks on the vessels denote the owners; these were conventional signs, it seems, not worthwhile in connection with the development of hieroglyphic writing. But the image on the cylinder-seals gives us almost the same picture as the royal plates. And here we first see some massive images of ordinary and fantastic animals, birds, etc., then symbolic, for the most part incomprehensible images follow, finally, all this turns into inscriptions, although very difficult in their archaism, but yet in the end possible for understanding.

Thus, comparatively soon, and before the eyes of history, the Egyptians developed the letter that was destined for a great, more than three thousand-year future, which at first glance is striking in its complexity, containing no less than 700 signs representing images of gods, people, animals, plants, other objects of the visible world, everyday life, everyday life, etc. These images in careful inscriptions are real drawings, indicating that the Egyptians developed artistic flair before writing and the latter used the first, the hieroglyphic line with well-known graphic techniques can be a real ornament, and the frequent use of writing on the vast planes of temple walls or on household items is often explained not by literary or magical, but by ornamental purposes. The indigenous origin of the Egyptian hieroglyphs is undoubted - they convey the Egyptian nature and Egyptian life and are adapted for the native language.

The latter is seen most closely from the fact that the development of Egyptian writing did not pass the stage of syllabism. In Semitic and Hamitic languages, the meaning of the root depends on consonants, vowels serve for grammatical changes, therefore, hieroglyphic writing in them could not pass from the image of words to the image of syllables, diverting the phonetic meaning of the first to convey the second (for example, if we had an image of a snake used for the syllable "uh" or the mouth for the syllable "mouth", as in the puzzles). If we notice this in the Assyrian-Babylonian cuneiform, then we have one of the proofs of the non-Semitic origin of the latter. Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting monosyllabic words became alphabetic characters for consonants (for example, a drawing of a quadrangular reservoir "she" for the letter "w", a drawing of a mouth "ro" with an aleph at the end for "r", etc.); hieroglyphs that conveyed polysyllabic words began to depict groups of two or three consonants without regard to which vowels were between them (for example, a chessboard drawing conveying the combination of "min" was used for both "men" and "mon", and for "moon", etc.); exactly the same as if our drawing of the bridge served as a designation for the concepts of "revenge", "revenge", etc.

Thus, the Egyptians found a way to depict not only objects, but also verbs and abstract concepts. They compiled a complete alphabet of consonants and diverted phonetic meanings from inventions to convey many groups of consonants. But why did they not appreciate the importance of the invention of the alphabet and did not discard all the ballast of other signs, switching to a purely phonetic alphabetic letter? There were several reasons. The origin of signs for one and several consonants was the same, and from the very beginning they began to be used indifferently; this use was retained both because of the conservatism inherent in the Egyptians, and because it greatly facilitated reading. The fact is that in the Egyptian language there are many roots that have common consonants; a text written without vowels and without separating words would be completely unreadable, and the Egyptians had to keep the historical spelling, as the English do under similar conditions, since the spelling physiognomy of individual words remained individual, and the vestige of ideographism, the so-called determinatives, except Moreover, they also served to separate words. These "determinatives" for the most part were originally signs used in their ideographic meaning (for example, a drawing of a road, a tree, etc.). They began to presuppose phonetic signs, if it was required to indicate which of the synonyms (for example, from different words denoting "road" and "path") or from different types (for example, which tree is meant). Subsequently, by analogy and for convenience, the Egyptians made this use common, inventing "determinants" for various kinds of concepts or words (for example, for abstract concepts - a roll of papyrus, for verbs - an armed hand) and placing them after almost every phonetically written word. In addition to the font, which comes from ancient times and was in common use, the Egyptians sometimes, and in the later eras of their culture, and mostly, used a special, so-called "enigmatic" font, which even more closely resembled our puzzles. Here old signs appear with different meanings, new signs appear; their combinations are often based on a complex play of wit, and reading also requires a lot of effort and wit.

The most convenient and common writing material in Egypt was papyrus, prepared from the core of a water plant now extinct in Egypt (eg pa-pyur - "Nile"). The removed core was cut into narrow longitudinal ribbons, then sheets of paper, mostly (16 by 40 cm) of light yellow or light brown color, were prepared from two rows of crisscrossing ribbons laid on top of each other under pressure. These sheets were glued in length, then rolled up, and a scroll was obtained sometimes several tens of meters long. They wrote in the era of the Ancient and Middle Kingdoms in vertical, then horizontal lines, always from the right hand to the left. Only from the very late, mostly from the Christian era, the first attempts to replace the scrolls with the more convenient form of our leather-bound books have come down to us. Almost most of the works of Egyptian writing are written on papyrus, with a few exceptions, almost all elegant literature, most of the works of a scientific and business nature. This material was fragile, which, however, did not prevent it from surviving millennia and reaching us; due to its fragility, it was sometimes replaced by a denser and, according to the Egyptians, more ancient and venerable - leather, which at that time did not yet reach the subtlety and grace of parchment and came to us at least not in the best form than papyrus. We know that he ordered to write his "Annals" on leather and transfer it to the temple for safekeeping, legends tell about the falling from the sky of leather scrolls with plans of temples, etc. Some Egyptian manuscripts on leather have come down to us. Separate chapters of the "Book of the Dead" were also written on burial shroud and canvas. Finally, the high cost of papyrus forced people to resort to shards of vessels, and in Thebes and their surroundings to Edfu - to fragments of beautiful and convenient for writing and drawing limestone, which are still lying here in abundance. These so-called ostracons (ostracas) are in abundance in various museums and are covered not only with abacus, lists, pen tests, drawings, but often interesting literary and religious passages, being in this respect completely similar to papyri. They have come down to us from all eras, from the New Kingdom to the Arab era, inclusive. Especially many of them are letters and business documents of demotic, Greek and Coptic. Stone, in the form of individual slabs or temple walls, was the material for documentary hieroglyphic inscriptions, for the perpetuation of events or for religious texts. There are hieroglyphic inscriptions on pedestals, stands and even the bodies of statues of kings, gods, figures and individuals.

This does not exhaust the list of objects on which the Egyptians wrote - they covered with inscriptions and sarcophagi, and scarabs, and amulets, and figurines, and fabrics, and religious and household items, in general, everything that gave a reason for writing and provided a place.

A sufficient number of writing instruments of Egyptian scribes have come down to us, who took them with them into the coffin. These are long rectangular boards with a recess for reeds and two or more round or oval recesses for black and red paints. The first imparted durability and shine by an admixture of gum, the second, used in the "red" lines, contained red lead. Feathers like ours first appear only in roman time... To dilute the paint, the scribe also had a vessel with water with him, from which he considered it his duty to make a libation to the gods Thoth and Ptah.

Pictures of desks with their contents, offices, scribes at their work, etc. also reached us in sufficient numbers.

I'll start with the official part of the historical interpretation of this process and what modern history generally knows about deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

In the study of this writing and in the deciphering of hieroglyphs, Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832) achieved the most outstanding results.

But look at these hieroglyphs and their phonemes:

Translation, decryption, and in my opinion a deep delusion or even delusion of Egyptologists can look

And from this not a step towards the Egyptologists can not do it! After all, all this is based on the authority of Champollion himself!

Take a look at this. This is a whole series of meaning, figurative writing. You can probably even say - this is a universal language that can be understood by any carrier of the mind. Then the conclusion is whether we are reasonable that we still cannot read it. This is just my opinion. And this is a doubt about the method, where everything is based on phonetic comparisons of hieroglyphs from the early 19th century. I had it for a long time. Only now I decided to express it in this article.

It is possible that something technical is shown here.

Probably only the lazy did not hear about these technical hieroglyphs on the ceiling in one of the Egyptian temples

There are symbols here that look like flying machines, and more than one type of them, probably.

As an addition:

Decryption of the Festkiy disk. Also phonetic translation. Although it still has the same symbols, pictures, images

In deciphering the Maya hieroglyphs, the situation is the same:

But in reality, understanding these Mayan images is even more difficult than the ancient Egyptian ones.

Phonetics of Aztec hieroglyphs

When using the materials of the article, an active link to the site with an indication of the author is required.

If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.

Subscribe to news

Next

Thank you so much for the very useful information in the article. Everything is stated very clearly. Feels like a lot of work has been done on analyzing the eBay store
- rootshell
  
  Thank you and other regular readers of my blog. Without you, I would not have been motivated enough to devote a lot of time to running this site. My brains are arranged like this: I like to dig deep, organize disparate data, try what no one has done before, or did not look from this angle. It is a pity that only our compatriots, because of the crisis in Russia, are by no means up to shopping on eBay. They buy on Aliexpress from China, as goods there are several times cheaper (often at the expense of quality). But online auctions eBay, Amazon, ETSY will easily give the Chinese a head start on the range of branded items, vintage items, handicrafts and various ethnic goods.
  - Next
    
    In your articles, it is your personal attitude and analysis of the topic that is valuable. Don't leave this blog, I often look here. There should be many of us. Email me I recently received an offer to teach me how to trade on Amazon and eBay. And I remembered your detailed articles about these bargaining. area I reread it all over again and concluded that the courses are a scam. I haven't bought anything on eBay myself. I am not from Russia, but from Kazakhstan (Almaty). But we, too, do not need extra spending yet. I wish you the best of luck and take care of yourself in the Asian region.
rootshell

It's also nice that eBay's attempts to russify the interface for users from Russia and the CIS countries have begun to bear fruit. After all, the overwhelming majority of citizens of the countries of the former USSR are not strong in knowledge of foreign languages. No more than 5% of the population know English. There are more among young people. Therefore, at least the interface in Russian is a great help for online shopping on this marketplace. Ebey did not follow the path of his Chinese counterpart Aliexpress, where a machine (very clumsy and incomprehensible, sometimes causing laughter) translation of the description of goods is performed. I hope that at a more advanced stage in the development of artificial intelligence, high-quality machine translation from any language to any in a matter of seconds will become a reality. So far we have this (a profile of one of the sellers on ebay with a Russian interface, but an English-language description):
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a52c9a89108b922159a4fad35de0ab0bee0c8804b9731f56d8a1dc659655d60.png