Ten-minute hieroglyphs - Lesson 4: Direction of writing and how to read words

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• recognise whether a hieroglyphic text (or part of a text) is written in rows or in columns;

• determine whether the signs should be read from right to left or left to right; and

• transliterate a word written left to right or right to left in one-letter hieroglyphs, including words containing stacked/ grouped symbols.

You will practise transliterating words in the follow-up activity.

Writing layout

Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs can be written horizontally (in rows) or vertically (in columns). The signs within a row or column can be written either right to left or left to right.

When looking at a new text, your first challenge is to determine its orientation (rows or columns) and direction of writing (right to left or left to right) .

Here are some basic guidelines:

Orientation is usually pretty obvious, but a single inscription may have some text areas arranged in rows and others in columns.

For example, on this stela the hieroglyphs at the top are written in rows, while those below are written in columns.

Close-up of stela

To determine the direction of writing of an area of text, look at the hieroglyphs that have faces (e.g. people and birds) and read into the faces.

In the short row below, the woman and bird are looking to the left so you start reading at the left end and go from left to right.

Row of hieroglyphs written left to right

Below is the same phrase, written in the opposite direction. The bird and woman are now facing to the right, so you start at the right end and read towards the left.

Row of hieroglyphs written right to left

Columns are read from top to bottom. Where two hieroglyphs are at the same vertical height you apply the 'faces rule' to decide which direction to read them in.

In the column on the left, the bird, bull and humanoid figure face to the left, meaning that where two or more hieroglyphs are at the same vertical height you start with the one on the left and read to the right. For example, in the bottom row the humanoid hieroglyph is read before the hieroglyph to its right.

The column on the right contains the same hieroglyphic text, but this time the hieroglyphs with faces are looking to the right, so where two or more hieroglyphs are at the same vertical height you start with the one on the right then read to the left. This means that although the hieroglyphs in the two columns are differently arranged, the signs are read in the same order.

Reading words

The rules you've learned so far enable you to read words where the hieroglyphs are written one after another, like this:

The word hꜢb written in left-to-right hieroglyphs

However, sometimes hieroglyphs are arranged in groups within a word. This looks pleasing and makes more efficient use of space. When this happens, read the signs normally until you get to the group. When you get to the group, read stacked hieroglyphs one layer at a time, starting at the top. Within each layer, the direction of reading is the same as that of the overall texts. Here's an example containing a small group. The hieroglyphs for p and d (in red) are stacked - when you get to them you read the top one first (p), then the one below (d). When you've completed the group you continue reading in the same direction as before.

The word Ꜣpd written in left-to-right hieroglyphs

Remember that many hieroglyphic words end in a determinative, which you do not transliterate. For example, hꜢb (which means 'send') ends in the walking legs determinative and Ꜣpd (which means 'bird') ends in the goose determinative. We'll learn more about these next time.

You'll practise with more examples in the follow-up activity.

Note: there are some special situations where hieroglyphs are written in what appears to be the wrong order. We'll come back to that in a future lesson.

Aside: Why are all the hieroglyphs in my textbook written in left-to-right rows?

Many teaching grammars and text editions use a single writing layout, which does not necessarily reflect that of the original texts that they reproduce.

For example, books written in English often use left-to-right rows. There are a number of reasons: left-to-right is the natural reading direction for English-language readers, and if you write the transliteration underneath the hieroglyphs it comes out in a convenient order for us to read. From a practical point of view, it has historically been difficult to typeset hieroglyphs, and reproducing a variety of layouts makes the job even harder. In fact, many older editions of hieroglyphic texts, as well as Faulkner's still commonly-used compact dictionary, use images of handwritten rather than typeset hieroglyphs.

In spite of this, it's important to be able to be able to read hieroglyphs regardless of the orientation and direction of writing, otherwise you'll struggle as soon as you look at a text on an object or in a photograph. The preferred hieroglyphic writing/ reading direction for Egyptians was actually right to left, and all texts written on papyrus (in hieratic and demotic) are written in this direction.

Follow-up

• Practise transliterating words using the Lesson 4 activities.

• Extension: learn the words on the flashcards - they're useful vocabulary.

Back to Lesson 3: Completing the 'alphabet' and alphabetical order

Go to Lesson 5: Determinatives