How To Read The Hieroglyphs

456 Words1 Page

The essence of the ancient civilisation was captured in the written language of the ancient Egyptians.

Hieroglyphs are the most recognised symbols of writing in the world. They were more than just beautiful pieces of artwork, they were the carriers of the knowledge of the Egyptians, and they were magical.

The ability to read the hieroglyphs was lost to the world in 391 C.E when Emperor Theodosius of the Byzantine Empire closed all centers of non-Christian learning. This actually ended over 3,000 years of knowledge of the Egyptians and the extinction of the language, because the temples and the priests were the ones who kept it alive.

The decline of Egyptian culture would not last forever, in 1822 the code of the hieroglyphs was cracked …show more content…

Jean Francois Champollion, at the age of 18, was able to read ancient Greek fluently and then was able to compare the Greek with the two other Egyptian scripts.

With the translation of the Rosette Stone, the Ancient Egyptians were now able to tell their stories. No other nation (apart from the Chinese) had kept meticulous records of their dealings with other nations and records of their kings.

The Hieroglyphs required that there be a large educated class of scribes who were able to read and write, and this was also necessary since the Egyptian state had a large civil service and needed to keep records.
To become a scribe you needed to start at an early age. Young boys would go to schools called “Houses of Life” to learn to read and write, and this was compulsory for young boys of the elite class. For boys from the lower classes to attend school was still possible in order to reach a higher level in society.

The Ancient Egyptians had three systems of writing: hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic. Hieroglyphs were the highly decorated form used on the walls of temples and tombs while Hieratic and Demotic were used for day to day work and

Show More
Related

  • Jean François Champollion: Deciphering Ancient Egypt with the Rosetta Stone

    1411 Words  | 3 Pages

    Arguably one of the most important discoveries made regarding the historical and cultural study of ancient Egypt is the translation of the writing form known as hieroglyphics. This language, lost for thousands of years, formed a tantalizing challenge to a young Jean François who committed his life to its translation. Scholars such as Sylvestre de Sacy had attempted to translate the Rosetta Stone before Champollion, but after painstaking and unfruitful work, they abandoned it (Giblin 32). Champollion’s breakthrough with hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone opened up new possibilities to study and understand ancient Egypt like never before, and modern Egyptology was born.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Egypt And Mesoamerica

    1089 Words  | 3 Pages

    Egyptian hieroglyphs were carved in stone, and later hieratic script was written on papyrus. However, Olmec glyphs was discovered on cylinders. Hence, Egyptians and Olmec had different types of writing, and different places to write.

    Read More

  • Civilization is Connected from the Mesopotamians to the Powerful Roman Empire

    833 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Mesopotamians and Egyptians are among the first civilizations to make a valuable contribution to Western Civilization. Both Babylonians and Egyptians managed to produce written systems of communicating ideas. The Babylonians created wedge-shaped cuneiform, and the Egyptians made pictographic hieroglyphics. This invention even allowed for Hammurabi’s Code of law to be written and preserved through the ages. The Phoenicians took this concept another step forward and fashioned the alphabet. The ability to record history is an exceptional achievement. Another development of the Ancient Near East was architecture. The Egyptian pyramids, and the Babylonian ziggurats stand as testimony to their society’s technological and architectural achievements. The Assyrians left a lasting impact on civilization with the advent of the idea of conquest which they took to ruthlessly brutal ends. Later the Persians would add a degree of tolerance into the conquest equation. The concept of conquest would leave an indelible mark on the West, for better or worse. These developments still play a role in contemporary society.

    Read More

  • The Development of Writing and Social Hierarchies

    1128 Words  | 3 Pages

    The need for writing in Uruk was drastically different than that of the Egyptians, however. As evidenced at the archaeological site of Hierakonpolis, the Egyptian sy...

    Read More

  • Similarities in the Artwork of Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, the Aegean cultures, and Ancient Greece

    955 Words  | 2 Pages

    Like the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians also believed in god and goddesses and was one of the first to develop their unique writing system called hieroglyphics. Egyptian’s also were the first to construct triangular pyramids with magnificent tombs to bury their dead pharaohs and queens. These pyramids were very comparable to the ziggurats built by the Mesopotamians. The Egyptians unlocked more access when they started using papyrus to make paper in order to communicate. They also inven...

    Read More

  • The Rosetta Stone

    501 Words  | 2 Pages

    Champollion, in 1822 was reserved a position on deciphering the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone.

    Read More

  • A Pharaoh and His People

    1544 Words  | 4 Pages

    In a cradle of civilization where survival trumped education in life’s necessities, it should be of little surprise that the literate were an elite class who were catapulted to the upper echelon of Egyptian society. There was no attempt to provide free and universal schooling, so the only people who received any education were the wealthy. Anyone of a lower class such as peasants, soldiers, farmers, or tradesmen had to toil in physical labor daily just to survive. To them, education was a luxury that they would never achieve. Scribes were some of the most educated and revered people in Egypt. Royal scribe Nebmare-nakht extolled the virtues of becoming a scribe in a letter to his son who, judging by said letter, appears to be resisting the family business in a rebellious p...

    Read More

  • The Rosetta Stone

    1025 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1799, when Napoleon’s army was dismantling a wall in Rashid, Egypt, they discovered the Rosetta Stone. Little did they know that this 11-inch thick piece of rock would be one of the greatest discoveries in history! It contained Egyptian scripture, with Greek also on the stone. This was used to decode the once lost Egyptian writing system. Before the 1800’s, attempts at trying to uncover the secrets held by the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics found on walls inside numerous tombs were useless. The pictures were falsely believed to be symbolic, representing some sort of object or idea. Something soon changed all of this misconception. 1799 was the year of a great breakthrough in Egyptology. French troops, under Napoleon’s command, were destroying a wall when they found a black, basalt stone. The stone was inscribed with three different forms of writing: Egyptian hieroglyphics, a shorthand form of hieroglyphs, and Greek written in 196 BC. The Rosetta Stone then became instrumental in decrypting the long forgotten Egyptian writing system. The stone was first discovered near Rosetta, Egypt, by one of Napoleon's soldiers, named variously as Bouchard, during his expedition to Egypt in August of 1799. In no time, this discovery was mentioned to all the top scholars who were immensely interested since there was no way to decode the hieroglyphs. In 1802, Johan David Akerblad was the first to break ground in identifying the first demotic symbols. He identified a few of the proper names in the demotic text, after comparing them with the same names found in the Greek text. (Ogg 78) Next on the scene was Thomas Young, an English physicist, who took an interest to the deciphering the Rosetta Stone as well. After much researching, Young was able to prove that the proper names in the hieroglyphics section of the stone did in fact have phonetic value, and were not made up of symbols. He then introduced the idea of the proper names being written with ovals around them, known as cartouches. In reality, the hieroglyphs only contained six. Of the phonetic values that he assigned to hieroglyphs, five were correct (p, t, i, n, and f). (Budge 54) In 1814, he revealed the way in which the hieroglyphic signs were to be read by studying the direction in which the birds and other animals were all facing. He also was able to correctly identify some single-consonant...

    Read More

  • Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) And Social Media

    3494 Words  | 7 Pages

    82).” According to Walter Ong, the act of communication through writing heightens ones consciousness and begins to change the way in which the writer thinks. This in turn facilitates the development of increasingly sophisticated technological advancements. Early pictographs were typically monotone and very simplistic in nature. However, as the technology evolved, humankind developed multi-hued writing media that improved the visual accuracy of the images created and subsequently improved the complexity of the message delivered. Essentially more visual detail equals a more complex symbology and abstraction. Some major milestones in the evolution of communication technology include the simplification of earlier literal depictions in the late Paleolithic era, the development of the first “alphabets” as quasi-abstract symbols representing the basic sounds of spoken language. These early alphabets were extremely complex and cumbersome until the Phoenicians developed a “totally abstract and alphabetical system of twenty-two simple phonetic signs, replacing the formidable complexity of cuneiform and hieroglyphs (Higgins, 2003).” The inhabitants of Greece and Rome adopted this system of writing which was in effect by 1500 B.C. and later developed what we know as the

    Read More

  • The Glove Of The Rosetta Stone Analysis

    169 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the story “The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone” by James Cross Giblin, the author’s viewpoint is the Rosetta Stone is very valuable because it allowed them to uncover and discover all the hieroglyphs. First, “this rather small piece of rock was more valuable than any of the larger objects in the room.” Despite the stone’s size, it is still important to museums and archaeologists. Next, “The language expressed in the hieroglyphs had already been dead for several hundred years.” It showed and told their past, yet no one knew how to read and discover what it was like. Finally, “All the secrets of ancient Egypt -Its history, its literature, its religious beliefs- remained hidden behind the lines of mysterious hieroglyphs.” If they wanted to learn

    Read More

  • The Role of Women in Ancient Egyptian Society

    3830 Words  | 8 Pages

    Upper class men, who had been schooled in their craft, did all the writings. As a result, there is very little material that deal with the lower peasant class. They were all illiterate and unable to record their tales. When studying women in Ancient Egypt, the great majority of the available texts discuss the lives of the upper class, which composed only a small percentage of the Egyptian population.

    Read More

  • Hieroglyphic Essay

    1022 Words  | 3 Pages

    This was an extremely labor intensive and time consuming process to complete. Because of the amount of work necessary to inscribe the hieroglyphs, the Egyptians developed a simpler form of writing called hieratic. It made use of less detailed and easier to write cursive versions of the hieroglyphs which could be written much more quickly. It was primarily written on papyrus and with a reed brush and ink. Hieroglyphs remained in use in tombs, temples, monuments, and other areas where wall inscriptions or more permanent writing was required, but hieratic became the standard for most other things, such as texts, letters, and everyday uses (Hieroglyphic writing, 2015). An even more streamlined version of the hieratic was developed in the 7th century BCE called demotic. At that point religious scripts were still written in hieratic, but demotic took over the majority of other writing and the knowledge of hieroglyphic writing became limited to only priests (Ancient Egypt, Hieroglyphics,

    Read More

  • Ancient Egypt Essay

    1833 Words  | 4 Pages

    The ancient Egyptians were people of many firsts. They were the first people of ancient times to believe in life after death. They were the first to build in stone and to fashion the arch in stone and brick. Even before the unification of the Two Lands, the Egyptians had developed a plow and a system of writing. They were accomplished sailors and shipbuilders. They learned to chart the cosmos in order to predict the Nile flood. Their physicians prescribed healing remedies and performed surgical operations. They sculpted in stone and decorated the walls of their tombs with naturalistic murals in vibrant colors. The legacy of ancient Egypt is written in stone across the face of the country from the pyramids of Upper Egypt to the rock tombs in the Valley of the Kings to the Old Kingdom temples of Luxor and Karnak to the Ptolemaic temples of Edfu and Dendera and to the Roma...

    Read More

  • How Ancient Literature Influenced Today’s Literature

    2285 Words  | 5 Pages

    The literature of Ancient Egypt is the result of a four thousand year period.  Hieroglyphic, demotic and hieratic are the three types of writing it was written in. The characters first consisted of pictures of objects, and ...

    Read More

  • Egyptian Mathematics

    656 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hieroglyphics were a traditional form of writing used by the Egyptian people. These carvings are one of the earliest examples contributing to current knowledge of ancient Egyptian mathematics. Inscriptions of early hieroglyphic numerals can be found on temples, stone monuments and vases. Such carvings typically include groups of inscriptions. Although hieroglyphs indicate the use of mathematics in early Egyptian civilization, they shed little light on any ...

    Read More

More about How To Read The Hieroglyphs

Open Document