Egyptian hieroglyphs

Jean-François Champollion's hieroglyph translations recorded in La Grammaire égyptienne

Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in ancient Egypt. Hieroglyphs simultaneously combined logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements, with a total of some 1,000 distinct characters. Hieroglyphics were used as sacred writing, appearing on monuments, statues, and religious papyrus texts.

Etymology

The word "hieroglyph" comes from the Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικός (hieroglyphikos), a compound of ἱερός (hierós "sacred") and γλύφω (glýphō "Ι carve, engrave"). Ancient Egyptians referred to the language as the "Writing of the Gods."

History and evolution

Origin

The earliest found symbols that resemble hieroglyph were found on pottery dating back to 4,000 BCE. The written language was considered difficult and was intended for people of significance such as pharaohs and priests. The mythological aura around the language was persistent in their culture as most Egyptian civilians were considered illiterate. Since hieroglyphs had no set writing direction, they could be be read left-to-right, right-to-left, horizontally, or vertically, but never bottom-to-top, and so it was confusing for Egyptologists to read them.

Mature writing system

Hieroglyphs were not only ideograms but also phonograms. The language consisted of phonetic glyphs, single characters, and logograms. Essentially it was a combination of phonetics, alphabet, and full words which in total formed a language. The Middle Egyptian periodcontained a little more than 700 signs. By the time of the Greco-Roman period, there were over 10,000 signs.

Late period and later survival

As the language became more commonplace with civilians, more variations were derived from the base language and it evolved further. The different languages are known as Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. Coptic was the only language of the five to survive until modern times to be deciphered. After Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt, the official language was changed to Greek. However, as a result of Greek and ethnic Egyptian tensions due to Greek resentment at being unable to read the hieroglyphs, the Rosetta Stone was made. It was written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek scripts. Due to the spread of Christianity, the pharaonic culture ended and in the resulting anti-polytheistic fervor, many monuments were destroyed, marking the end of hieroglyphic writing and understanding.

Decipherment

Between the 5th century BCE and the Renaissance, knowledge of hieroglyphs was entirely lost. Many experts attempted to decipher the language with little success. Some groundwork was made in discovering the grammatical structure, and in the confirmation that cartouches were markers for the names of royalty. The next big breakthrough in deciphering the language came with the unearthing of the Rosetta Stone.

In June 1798, during the French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt and Syria, intending to push out the British Empire's influence and replace it with the new First French Republic. In July 1799, while the French Army camped in the port city Rosetta 40 km east of Alexandria, the engineering officer Pierre-François Bouchard found the stone. The fact that the stone was written in three different languages meant that experts could finally translate it from something else. The stone's hieroglyphic section was only fully translated more than 20 years after it Jean-François Champollion acquired a copy of the transcript. Champollion's research was compiled in an autographical manuscript Grammaire égyptienne (lit. "Egyptian grammar"), published posthumously in France in 1836.

By the 19th century, more progress had been made on the language. Jean-Baptiste Bigant created multiple charts with all known hieroglyphs on it. The English scholar Sir Alan Gardiner created a list classifying the common hieroglyphic signs and their variants. His findings were later publisher in his identically-titled 1927 book Egyptian Grammar.

Examples

• 
  Bayek
  (bw-y3-k)
• 
  Aya
  (3-y-ꜥj)
• 
  Medunamun
  (b3.d-w-ı͗-mn.n)
• 
  Ptolemy XIII
  ^{[citation needed]}
• 
  Ramesses II
  (wsr mȝˁt rˁ stp n rˁ)
• 
  Tutankhamun
  (nb-ḫprw-rꜤ)
  (twt-Ꜥnḫ-ꞽmn ḥḳꜢ-ꞽwnw-šmꜤꞽ)
• 
  Neferneferuaten Nefertiti
  (Nfr nfrw itn Nfr.t jy.tj)
• 
  Cleopatra
  (Qlwpdrt nṯrt mr(t) jts)

Behind the scenes

As the ancient Egyptian spoken language was lost to time, Ubisoft opted to use English when making the 2016 video game Assassin's Creed: Origins and relied the conceit that the Animus was translating the dialogue into whatever gaming system language settings the player had selected. What few spoken Egyptian sound clips that exist in Origins are based upon Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar.

The pharaohs' names as depicted with hieroglyphs in cartouches varies, with developers using either the monarchs' prenomens or throne names, their nomens or given names, or both. Ptolemy and Tutankhamun have both names displayed, though Ptolemy's has scant archaeological record behind it to facilitate an easy and localized translation; Ramesses and Nefertiti have just their prenomens; and Cleopatra has just her nomen, as no prenomen exists for her due to how short her reign was and the fact that Egypt became a province of the new Roman Empire under Octavian following her death.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Origins (first appearance)
  • The Hidden Ones
  • The Curse of the Pharaohs
• Discovery Tour: Ancient Egypt