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Ten-minute hieroglyphs - Lesson 1: Basic concepts

  • Writer: Dr Sian Thomas
    Dr Sian Thomas
  • Jun 9
  • 2 min read

Updated: Jun 20

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Please read the course introduction before starting this lesson.


Learning objectives


By the end of the lesson you will be able to explain in simple terms:


  • what hieroglyphs are and what they can represent;

  • the relationship between Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs and the ancient Egyptian language; and

  • the relationship between the different scripts (hieroglyphs, hieratic, demotic, Coptic) used to write the ancient Egyptian language.


What are hieroglyphs?


Hieroglyphs are a writing system. They are one way in which the ancient Egyptian language was written, but they are not the only way: ancient Egyptian has a written record spanning more than 4000 years and during this time it was also written in hieratic (cursive handwritten hieroglyphs), demotic (a sort of shorthand, rather complicated and usually handwritten script) and Coptic (written in the Greek alphabet, plus some extra letters). To learn more, read The Journey from Hieroglyphs to Coptic, which focuses on Coptic, but also explains the relationship between hieroglyphs, hieratic, demotic and Coptic.


It's important to draw a distinction between the language (ancient Egyptian) and the writing system (hieroglyphs), much as you would between the English language and the Roman alphabet in which it's usually written: being able to read the alphabet is important, but you also need to learn the language's vocabulary, grammar and syntax.


What do hieroglyphs represent?


There are hundreds of hieroglyphic signs. Many of these have phonetic values, that is, they represent sounds. Others are used as 'determinatives': these are signs placed at the end of an Egyptian word to give an indication of the word's general meaning (e.g. that it refers to a person, a town, a plant, an idea ... ). Some hieroglyphic signs are used as ideograms, which means that they represent the thing they're a picture of. Some signs can fulfil more than one of these functions.


In the lessons that follow you'll first learn some phonetic hieroglyphs, starting with the ones that represent single letters (a 'hieroglyphic alphabet'). We'll add in some common determinatives and ideograms along the way.


Follow-up





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