Deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. The mysterious writing of ancient Egypt and its decoding

The spoken and literary language of the ancient Egyptians changed over the course of almost 4,000 years of the history of the people and went through five successive stages of its development. In scientific literature, there are: the language of the Old Kingdom - the language of ancient Egyptian; Middle Egyptian - a classical language, so called because it was in it that the best literary works were written, which were later considered role models; New Egyptian language (XVI-VIII centuries BC); demotic language (VIII century BC - V century AD); Coptic language (III-VII centuries AD).

Despite the presence of continuity between these languages, each of them was a separate language with a different grammatical and lexical structure. The ratio between them was approximately the same, for example, as between the Old Slavic, Old Russian and Russian languages. In any case, the Egyptian of the New Kingdom could hardly understand the speech of his ancestor, who lived in the time of the Middle Kingdom, not to mention the more ancient eras. The Egyptian language was the spoken living language of the indigenous population of the Nile Valley and practically did not go beyond its borders even during the creation of the great Egyptian empire in the era of the New Kingdom. The Egyptian language became dead (that is, it was not spoken) already in the 3rd century. n. e., when it was replaced by the Coptic language. From the 7th century n. e. Coptic began to be supplanted by the language of the conquerors - the Arabs, and gradually began to be forgotten. There are currently about 4.5 million Copts (Christian Egyptians) living in the Arab Republic of Egypt who speak Arabic but worship in Coptic, the last relic of the ancient Egyptian language.

To fix various phenomena of diverse life and economic activity, the ancient Egyptians created a peculiar and complex writing system that could convey different shades of thought and complex movements of the human soul. Egyptian writing originated at the end of the 4th millennium BC. e., went a long way of formation and how a developed system developed by the time of the Middle Kingdom. Its initial basis was pictorial writing, pictography, in which each word or concept (for example, "sun", "house" or "capturing") was depicted in the form of corresponding drawings (sun, houses or people with their hands tied).

Over time, as management became more complex, the need for more frequent use of writing for various needs, pictorial signs began to be simplified. Separate drawings began to depict not only these specific concepts of the sun, house, bull, etc., but sound combinations, syllables - with the help of a set of which many other words and concepts could be expressed.

Egyptian writing was composed of a certain set of signs that convey the sounds of spoken words, symbols and stylized drawings that explain the meaning of these words and concepts. Such written characters are called hieroglyphs, and Egyptian writing is called hieroglyphics. By the middle of the II millennium BC. e. The most commonly used hieroglyphs numbered about 700, and in the Greco-Roman era - several thousand. Thanks to the organic combination of signs denoting syllables, ideograms explaining the meaning of the word, and determinatives-drawings, as if finally clarifying the concept as a whole, the Egyptians managed to accurately and clearly convey not only the simple facts of reality and economy, but also the complex shades of abstract thought or artistic image. .

The material for writing hieroglyphs was: stone (walls of temples, tombs, sarcophagi, steles, obelisks, statues, etc.), clay shards (ostracons), wood (sarcophagi, boards, etc.), leather scrolls. Papyrus was widely used. Papyrus "paper" was made from specially prepared stems of the papyrus plant, which grew in abundance in the backwaters of the Nile. Individual sheets of papyrus were glued together into rolls, which usually reached several meters in length, but we know scrolls 20 m and even 45 m long (the so-called Great Papyrus Harris). Scribes usually wrote with a brush made from the stem of the marsh plant kalamus, one end of which the scribe chewed. A brush soaked in water was dipped into a depression with red or black paint (ink).

If the text was applied to a hard material, the scribe carefully deduced each hieroglyph, but if the entry was made on papyrus, then the hieroglyphic characters were deformed and changed beyond recognition compared to the original sample. Thus, a kind of italic hieroglyphic writing was obtained, which is called hieratic writing or hieratic. The relationship between hieroglyphics and hieratics can be compared to the difference between printed type and handwritten writing.

From the 8th century BC e. a new type of writing appeared, in which several characters that were previously written separately now merge into one character, which speeded up the process of writing texts and thereby contributed to the spread of writing. This type of writing is called demotic, demotic (i.e. folk) writing.

The gradual improvement of writing led to the selection of 21 simple signs depicting individual consonants. In fact, these were the first alphabetic characters. Based on them, alphabetic writing developed in the southern kingdom of Meroye. However, in Egypt itself, alphabetic characters did not replace the more cumbersome, but more familiar symbolic-conceptual hieroglyphic system. Alphabetic signs were used in this system as its organic part.

Teaching various types of hieroglyphic writing took place in special scribe schools and was available only to representatives of the ruling class.

Egyptian letter

Egyptian letter

Writing itself as a sign system implies, firstly, the presence of a limited set of graphemes that can be reproduced an unlimited number of times, mainly retaining their meaning or being used in close meanings, and, secondly, the presence of a limited number of rules for combining these graphemes into sign complexes . Graphemes, as invariant elements of a particular writing system, enter into certain paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships with each other. Each grapheme is characterized by its own set of differential features, due to which it is recognized at each next reproduction and does not mix with others.
Pictography did not meet these conditions. Pictures that are used to convey messages, as a rule, are not reproduced in the form of ready-made characters and do not have the property of invariance. They do not form a sign system by themselves. But, as the history of ancient writings shows, it is pictograms, acquiring the property of reproducibility and starting to come into opposition with other similar signs, that turn out to be the basis for the formation of writing systems. They become invariant elements of the system, which are able to have their own variants in specific acts of writing.
The oldest writing systems were ideographic. The prototypes of ideograms were most often pictograms. For this reason, many ideograms are iconic., those. they remind of some objects, as if copying them.
Hieroglyphs (Greek hieros "sacred" and glyphe "what is carved (for example, on stone)"; first about the signs of Egyptian writing, and then about other signs dating back to drawings) were iconic at the initial stage of the formation of ancient Egyptian writing, the former in use from the end of the 4th - the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. by 3-4 centuries. AD, when the ancient Egyptian language (a separate branch of the Afroasian family) was replaced by the Coptic language that arose from it.
At the heart of Egyptian writing, there were about 500 pictograms mnemonically associated with certain concepts and through them with words expressing them. Thus, the same sign expressed the words pr "house" and pr(j) "go out", wr "swallow" and wr "big", hprr "beetle" and hpr "become", dr "basket" and dr "border ".
Numerous illustrations are given below, which can be the basis for the subsequent explanation of the principle that was the result of the long evolution of Egyptian writing from a purely ideographic (and logographic) principle to a letter in which many phonographic signs appear. Consider them slowly.

The Egyptians wrote from left to right and right to left. Often the direction of writing changed with the beginning of a new line (this principle was called boustrophedon).

Along with the signs formed at the first stage for objects and actions (ideograms) and the words corresponding to them (logograms), phonograms are developed, i.e. signs for sound sequences (of 2 or 3 sounds) and eventually for individual sounds. Ultimately, Egyptian writing becomes a rather complex system that combines heterogeneous signs.

The following are examples of ideograms.

To convey abstract concepts, special signs are introduced - the so-called. semantic determinants. The sound of a word can be conveyed using phonetic complements.

Now examples of complex phonograms are given.

The following are examples of simple phonograms.

In Egyptian writing, means are being developed for conveying grammatical meanings, i.e. signs whose denotations are grammatical morphemes (affixes).

From a comparison of the given signs, it can be seen that gradually the similarity of ideograms with their denotations may be lost. Losing their original iconicity, they become more schematic, abstract and turn into signs-symbols.
Many ideograms began to correlate with certain words, i.e. became logograms. True, at the same time they could only have a verbal, and not a phonetic reading.
Other signs expressed either one word or several associative words (for example, the image of the sun for "sun" and "day"), and their different phonetic reading was provided by the addition of special complements. The complement was one or more additional signs that reproduced the consonant composition of the entire word that it accompanied, or its final part.
The third signs conveyed only the consonant composition of words, and then an unambiguous semantic reading of words was provided by the addition of a determinative (semantic key), which was not readable by itself. Semantic determinants served to construct complex signs expressing actions (verbs), features (adjectives), abstract concepts (abstract nouns). So, for example, the image of a roll of papyrus meant that an abstract concept was meant. Functional words were written only in consonantal characters. Some signs were used both as logograms and as phonograms.
As a result, Egyptian writing was not entirely ideographic: along with ideograms (actually, logograms), it also included phonograms (namely, syllabograms). Most of the words were combinations of phonographic and ideographic signs. So, the image of the plan of the house meant "house", and the addition of a phonetic complement and a pattern of running legs to this sign served to convey the homophonic word "go out". The appearance of consonant signs that convey only one or several consonants with an arbitrary vowel or zero vowel marked the beginning of the phonetization of Egyptian writing, its transformation from a logographic into a verbal-syllabic (logographic-syllabic) system. However, phonetization in Egyptian writing was not completed. Nevertheless, it was in Egyptian writing that the principle of writing a syllable could be formed (namely, according to the model "consonant + any vowel, including the zero of a vowel"), which turned out to be most suitable for isolating individual signs for consonants and building alphabetic systems.
Hieroglyphic texts could be written both vertically and horizontally, usually from right to left. The direction of the letter was indicated by a special sign. Words referring to kings and gods were highlighted in the text. Both of the most common names of the king were placed in a cartouche or "royal ring".
For a long time, two varieties were used in parallel: hieroglyphics (careful reproduction of the depicted object) and hieratics (cursive writing, starting from 2755 BC). When writing hieratic signs on papyrus, blunt reed pens and ink were used. Hieratic texts were intended mainly for the purposes of worship (as the very name of this type of cursive writing indicates). From the 7th c. on the basis of hieratics, a new type of cursive writing is developed - demotic (folk writing), in which signs are simplified, polyconsonant signs are replaced by single-consonant ones, with them determinatives appear that have the character of generalizing signs for classes of concepts.
Hieroglyphs were used by the Egyptians starting around 3000 BC. and continued to be used to make monumental inscriptions on monuments even during the Roman colonization. The last hieroglyphic inscription dates from 394. Until Greco-Roman domination, the number and form of hieroglyphs remained unchanged. From 332, the number of signs, primarily phonograms, began to increase sharply. By the 5th c. the Egyptian language became dead. For the Coptic language that developed from it in the 2nd century. an alphabetic letter is created, based on the principles of Greek graphics and using 8 characters from the Egyptian letter. It was originally intended to translate biblical texts from Greek into Coptic. In the 11th-12th centuries. The Coptic language ceased to play the role of a general literary language, giving this role to Arabic. But it survived as a cult language in the Coptic Christian communities.
The use of hieroglyphs in Cretan, Proto-Sinaitic, Proto-Palestinian, Luvian writing is hardly directly related to the influence of Egyptian writing.
Egyptian writing in all its varieties (hieroglyphics, hieratics and demotic) reflected the life of the Egyptians and recorded all the main stages in the development of the ancient Egyptian language over three millennia. Over time, it was forgotten by the Egyptians themselves. Experiments to decipher Egyptian writing were initially episodic (4th, 17th, and 18th centuries) and ended in failure. The key to deciphering was given by the Rosetta Stone found in 1799 with three identical texts (hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek). Jean-Francois Champollion, who created Egyptology as a science in the 1920s, made an outstanding contribution to the deciphering of the Egyptian language system while still in his youth. 19th century
The main difficulties in deciphering texts were created by the lack of signs for vowels. The set of consonantal signs is mostly revealed.

Below I give my surname Susov (Susow: w = u) in Egyptian hieroglyphs:

You can also make a similar attempt using one of the hyperlinks (in the list of sources).

• USM; AAR.
• LES/BES (Articles: Letter. Pictography. Ideogram. Logogram. Hieroglyphs. Egyptian script. Ancient Egyptian language. Egyptology).

· Additional material on ancient Egyptian and Coptic languages

· Ancient Egypt

· Ancient Egypt Webquest

· Ancient Egyptian

· Art History Main Page

· Bibliotheken in Mesopotamien und Aegypten

· DIA - Ancient Egypt

· Egypt: History: Hieroglyphics

· Egypt Page

· Egyptian Hieroglyphs

· Fun with Hieroglyphs

· Giza On Line - Hieroglyphs

· Heliii Links

The writing and knowledge of Ancient Egypt for a long time was an absolute mystery for Europeans (and other people, including the local Arabic-speaking population). One could only guess what was depicted on the walls of the tombs and carved in the bas-reliefs of Abu Simbel and the palace of the pharaohs in Luxor. Intrigued researchers tried to give the found texts symbolic interpretations, which later turned out to be far from reality. The main difficulty was that the hieroglyphic writing of the ancient Egyptians did not resemble any modern language. The image could mean either one sound or several, as well as an idea. In addition, the hieroglyphs were placed in an arbitrary order, and were not read from left to right, as we are accustomed to. How did they decipher the mysterious letters? Read about it in the article.

History of writing in ancient Egypt

It originated at the very dawn of human civilization. At first, these were primitive pictograms, that is, the image accurately conveyed the visible object as accurately as possible. Such schematic pictures were preserved in later writing. It mainly concerned the animal world: a lion, a snake, an owl or a hare are very recognizable. Around the fourth millennium BC, the writing of Ancient Egypt began to move away from primitive pictograms, which, in addition to direct objects, began to denote verbs or abstract concepts, as well as sounds. Hieroglyphs appeared - very schematic drawings-symbols. So, the eye began to denote not only the organ of vision, but also the ability to see, look (at something) and even “divine grace”. The triangle symbolized the hill, the mountain, but also the desert and foreign countries. The image of a falcon conveyed the sound "a". The Greeks in the third century BC called such a complex letter hieroglyphics. This is where the term known to us came from.

Development of writing

Years passed, intertwining into centuries. Hieroglyphs were first carved in stone or painted on the walls of tombs. Later, they began to draw with reed sticks on papyrus, and for drafts they used waxed or clay tablets. Thus, as the writing of Ancient Egypt developed, the hieroglyphs began to change. Simpler images were needed to apply them quickly. But since the ancient Egyptians believed that the god Thoth gave them writing, the hieroglyphs remained unchanged for many centuries. They just began to be used exclusively for writing holy texts. In this, an analogy can be drawn with medieval Europe: Mude-netcher (Holy Language) was akin to Latin, while hieratic cursive, similar to the Vulgate, was used for daily records.

Culture of Ancient Egypt

Writing largely conveys the worldview and religious beliefs of the people of this great ancient civilization. Without reading the Book of the Dead or the Texts of the Sarcophagi, it is impossible to fully understand the images on the tombs, and the very need for their construction. We can say that the Egyptians had an invaluable influence on the ancient Greeks. One can only mention in passing Imhotep's Books of Medicine (2700 BC), Kajemmi's Teachings (2350 BC) or Ptahhotep's Teachings (2400 BC). In the Third Intermediate Period, the writing of Ancient Egypt was replenished with Demotic. In it, the hieroglyphs were simplified as much as possible.

Oblivion

At the beginning of our era, Christian missionaries penetrate Egypt, using the simpler Greek alphabet to spread the texts of the Gospels. However, they, often local natives, continue to speak the ancient Egyptian dialect. That is, they write down the sounds of the ancient language in Greek letters. This is how the Coptic script was born, which was used by Egyptian Christians until the beginning of the twentieth century. The Hellenistic era and the conquest by Rome contributed to the fact that ancient Egyptian writing was gradually forgotten. The last hieroglyphs were carved on the wall of the temple of Isis on the island of Prosopitida. By AD 500, no one knew this letter.

Champollion and the Rosetta stone

Only in 1824 a young scientist from Grenoble was able to decipher the writing of Ancient Egypt. And helped him in this ... a stone! It was discovered in 1799 near Alexandria by the French diplomat Bouchard. This piece of black stone slab had on its polished side the royal decree of Ptolemy V. Another text we can't read? Not! The era of the Ptolemaic reign refers to the Hellenistic period, when the Greek language went along with the Egyptian and had official status. Therefore, the royal decree was written three times. Above - in ancient hieroglyphs, in the middle - in simplified demotic, and below - in Greek. Having the key (classical Hellenistic language), the French scientist Champollion was able to decipher the mystery of ancient Egyptian writings.

One less mystery, but there is still a lot of work left for scholars working with Egyptian texts.

In May 2009, my mother and I visited Egypt. We visited the land, which keeps a lot of amazing and mysterious things. A bright moment was an excursion to Cairo and Giza - to the pyramids, the sphinx and the ancient mummies of the Cairo Egyptian Museum. In the museum, I was surprised by the ancient papyri, some as wide as a wall.

The paintings on the walls of the tombs of the pharaohs and nobles, after three and a half millennia, continue to amaze with more and more secrets. I saw it all. And it struck me as well.

I returned from Egypt filled with impressions. And in September I went to school, began to study in the fifth grade. At the lessons of history, we began to study the topic "Ancient Egypt". Naturally, I wanted to know more about this country. I was particularly interested in the question of the origin of writing. Why? I really wanted to learn about the secrets of hieroglyphs - signs of writing that can convey the sounds of speech. Why did ancient Egypt have written language earlier than in other countries? What materials did the Egyptians begin to use for writing? How was the mystery of hieroglyphs revealed? Was the Egyptian alphabet compiled? These and other questions became interesting for me. I started looking for material in books and on the Internet to answer them.

INTEREST IN THE PAST OF EGYPT

The original culture of Ancient Egypt has attracted the attention of all mankind since time immemorial.

Egypt is a magical land. This is the birthplace of one of the most ancient and most developed civilizations, which had a tremendous impact on the development of world culture. Shadows of the gods, mummies of the pharaohs, mysterious sphinxes and majestic tombs - these concepts are known even to people farthest from history.

Millennia have passed, but the lively interest in the history of ancient Egypt has by no means dried up. Against! But for a long time a huge layer of Egyptian history was unknown to people: scientists could not decipher the mysterious hieroglyphs.

A systematic and in-depth study of the history of Ancient Egypt began only in the 19th century.

“Egyptian writing has a symbolic character. Each hieroglyph stands for a whole word or even a phrase,” suggested the historian Plutarch, who lived at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries.

Interest in the past of Egypt increased significantly after it was conquered by Alexander the Great in 332 BC and a large number of Greeks moved there.

Egyptology has opened wide access to the treasury of cultural values ​​created by a talented and hardworking people. We can now appreciate the enormous contribution of the ancient Egyptians to the development of world culture, science and art.

And the Egyptians had something to be proud of! They were the first in the history of mankind who determined the length of the year at 365 days, divided the year into 12 months, 30 days each, at the end of each year added 5 additional days, celebrated as the birthdays of the Gods. The day was divided into 24 hours. The use of astronomy and astrology in ancient Egypt is also evidenced by 156 "Zodiacs" (star charts) found. The most famous of them is the Round Dendera Zodiac.

Also in ancient Egypt, handicrafts, woodworking, and pottery were developed. The carpentry industry was very developed. Mechanics achieved great development: levers, rollers, and an inclined plane were used in construction.

The grandiose temples and tombstones of Ancient Egypt, dotted with hieroglyphs, amaze modern man, who is not so easy to understand their meaning and significance. They are evidence of the special attitude of the ancient Egyptians, which helped them solve their social problems. This is a kind of embodiment of a way of thinking and acting, so strange and at the same time so close to us.

THREE WRITING SYSTEMS IN ANCIENT EGYPT

In the 4th millennium BC, pictographic (pictorial) writing appeared in Egypt, and by the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, hieroglyphics appeared (a term of Greek origin and means “sacred written characters”, the Egyptians called their writing “sacred speech”).

There were over 750 hieroglyphs in ancient Egyptian writing. But already in the period of the Old Kingdom, signs in simplified writing begin to be used, which later will lead to the emergence of hieratic writing, and in the 1st millennium BC - demotic (cursive writing). Initially, hieroglyphs denoted whole concepts, later there was a transition to syllabic, partially even to phonetic writing, i.e., individual signs began to denote syllables and letters. After the closure of all pagan temples at the direction of the Roman emperor Theodosius the Great (end of the 4th century AD), Egyptian writing was completely forgotten.

It was deciphered and read again only in the 19th century, after the French philologist Francois Champollion (1790-1832) unraveled the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The ancient Egyptians believed that writing was invented by the god Thoth and called their hieroglyphic writing "mdwt ntr" (God's words). The earliest evidence of writing that existed in Egypt has been dated to 3400 BC. Cult writing was used for daily writing. Cult writing was invented and developed at more or less the same time as writing, which was based on hieroglyphs. The cult script was used in parallel for everyday purposes such as keeping records and writing letters. With the emergence of the ruling nobility (priests, military leaders, nobles, officials) in society, a more complex writing system appeared.

In ancient Egypt, three writing systems were used: hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic.

Hieroglyphic system invented 3000 BC. e. , represents the earliest form of ancient Egyptian writing. Its elements are pictures, or pictograms, and it was used for religious texts.

Hieratic is a simplified, cursive form of hieroglyphic used in legal and business documents.

Demotic writing. Demotic (Demotic) or the type of writing popular at that historical period got its name thanks to Herodotus. Demotic writing developed from the so-called cult variety around 600 BC. The Egyptians themselves called this type of writing "sekh shat" (sekh shat - for writing documents). Demotic script was used to write laws, economic, scientific, literary and religious documents.

The system of this letter is the same: the same sound signs, determinants. But in the demotic letter, an attempt is made to designate vowels. And from the beginning of the new era, the Christian Egyptians began to use the Greek alphabet, adding a few characters. But how surprised the Egyptians would be if they learned that they received their own invention from the Greeks!

Here's how it happened. From time immemorial, the Egyptians encountered ancient Semitic tribes in the Sinai Peninsula and in Palestine. These tribes in the XIII-XII centuries BC adopted the idea of ​​the alphabet that the Egyptians had, and created their letters under the influence of the external forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs. In turn, these letters were adopted by the Phoenicians, and in the 9th-7th centuries BC, the Phoenician alphabet was borrowed by the Greeks, who adapted it to the needs of their language, in particular, they began to transmit vowel sounds.

As you know, the Greek alphabet formed the basis of many alphabets. The Christian Egyptians themselves accepted it. From the Greek alphabet came the Latin. Finally, our alphabet goes back to Greek. Therefore, our letters go back to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs

MATERIALS FOR LETTER. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SCRIPTS

The Egyptians used a wide variety of writing materials. Ostraka - small flat fragments of limestone peeling off rocks on the west bank of the Nile in Thebes, or fragments of ceramics were used to record small letters and messages. The ostraca were most often used by students in schools. Sometimes they used small wooden boards covered with a layer of gypsum, they also used linen, leather.

However, the Egyptians invented a cheap and convenient writing material, very close to paper in its qualities - sheets of papyrus that could be glued into scrolls of any length. Scientists for many years tried to unravel the secret of the ancient masters. It had to be simple, since a lot of papyrus was required.

The material for the manufacture of papyrus was a water herbal flower, which the Greeks called papyrus (papyrus). Papyrus used to grow profusely in the swampy regions of Lower Egypt, where it no longer exists. He played a huge role in Egypt: they made ropes, baskets, cardboard, wickerwork, boats, and so on, but the main value was the production of material for writing. Papyrus grew very quickly, producing new shoots all year round.

Papyrus was collected in the early morning, then taken to the workshop. To make paper, craftsmen used the soft white core of papyrus, cutting it lengthwise into several thin strips. On a special flat table, the strips were laid in a row, carefully fitting to each other. On top of this row, across it, they laid a second, exactly the same row of strips. Then they carefully placed a light press on the fabric and left it for several hours. During this time, the juice that came out of the papyrus firmly stuck the strips together, and they turned into a solid sheet of thin white paper. When the sheet dried, it was carefully cut into pieces and glued into strips of various lengths, usually from a meter to two. Papyrus was smoothed with round smooth stones or ivory spatulas, rolled into tubes and tied with cords.

The papyrus was cherished: often the old notes were carefully washed away, the sheet was dried, and then reused. When a piece of papyrus was written to the end, another was glued to it. The book got longer and longer. For storage, it was rolled up into a scroll. Some books were obtained up to forty meters.

"Become a writer! He is exempt from duty. He is protected from all kinds of work. ”So it is written in one ancient Egyptian papyrus, which tells how a father takes his son to the city to send him to the school of scribes.

To become a scribe, one had to study for fifteen years. It was necessary to master the most complex writing system, the outlines of more than seven hundred hieroglyphs, the long complex titles of the pharaoh and nobles, and much more. (Annex 3)

Papyrus was not cheap, and at first the students wrote on something else, for example, on shards of broken dishes. The scribe enjoyed universal respect, not only as an important administrative person, but also as an educated person. In general, the Egyptians treated their writing with great respect, calling it "honey netcher", as they believed it was given to people by the gods. They tried to write a prayer or a wise saying wherever it was appropriate. The Egyptians treated books with no less respect. They claimed that the first book was written by the great god of wisdom, Tod, revered as the patron of scribes; before starting work, a prayer was offered to him.

The temples had extensive libraries where a variety of books were kept: religious, medical, literary works. The books were papyrus scrolls that were gradually unrolled as they were read. They were stored in special cases. The Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphs. On the walls of the tombs, they were carefully drawn and painted. The scribe was a true artist. It is no coincidence that the concepts of "writing" and "drawing" were designated the same. Hieroglyphic texts were often accompanied by colorful pictures. In books, hieroglyphs were written in black ink. Marking the beginning of a new page, the scribe applied the first characters in red ink - hence, by the way, the famous "red line" comes from.

Ink was made from soot or from charcoal, water and resin. The quality of the ink was very high, it is characteristic that it has retained its deep black gloss since that time. For writing titles and titles of sections, they also used red paint - natural ocher.

Scribes stored their brushes and ink in a pencil case, a wooden accessory with two cutouts for holding brushes and two recesses for ink bowls.

The Egyptian book has always been in the form of a suvoy. The text was divided into rather narrow columns, which were a kind of pages that were revealed to the reader as the suvoy was opened. The library of the University of Leipzig has a written memo that contains 110 of these "pages". The length of the suvoy is approximately 20 meters.

DISCLOSURE OF THE MYSTERIES OF HIEROGLYPHS

The key to unraveling the mystery of hieroglyphs was bilingual - a bilingual spelling carved on the famous Rosetta stone, stored in the British Museum in London.

The history of this find is as follows: in 1799, French soldiers of Napoleon's expedition, while laying trenches, near Rosetta, not far from Alexandria, found a large stone slab covered with inscriptions. On the upper part was a hieroglyphic text, below - a type of Egyptian - Demotic script, and below there was a text in Greek. The text, based on the evidence of Greek inscriptions, fell on the period of the reign of Ptolemy V (204-181 BC) and contained a charter of priests in honor of honoring the king. There is no doubt that the Greek text was a translation from the Egyptian language. The inestimable value of the Rosetta stone was immediately appreciated by the entire scientific world, however, all attempts to read Egyptian hieroglyphs ended in failure. The young French scientist Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832) was destined to solve this problem.

Since childhood, he was interested in ancient Egyptian writing, studied, in addition to classical languages, also Hebrew, Arabic and Coptic. Linguistic erudition and a deep knowledge of the history and culture of Egypt helped Champollion unleash the problem. After examining the Rosetta stone in detail, he noticed that some of the Egyptian signs were surrounded by frames. In the Greek text, the name of Ptolemy was in the same place in the frame. Champollion allowed the idea that the hieroglyphs in the frame mean the same name. But since it was about the definition of only one inscription, the scientist doubted the correctness of his assumption. And then a lucky break came to the rescue. In 1815, a second bilingual spelling was found on the island of Philae, where, in addition to the name of Ptolemy, there was also the name of Cleopatra. Champollion also read the names of the kings Thutmose and Ramesses. In one of the studied inscriptions, he found hieroglyphic signs, next to which a horse was depicted. He knew that in the Coptic language the word "chtor" means horse. The scientist did not know the first sign of the hieroglyphic inscription, the second sign corresponded to the letter T, and the third - R. Therefore, the fourth sign - the picture - is a determinative indicating which class the word belongs to. The above group of hieroglyphs meant "htr", that is, a horse. So, Champollion established the sign X in the Egyptian letter. It must be said that, while the names written in separate letters were read relatively easily, all other inscriptions resembled modern puzzles, where different signs resembled a whole word or individual syllables, or simply letters. So, Champollion discovered the presence of sound alphabetic signs in Egyptian writing, showed the mixed nature of this writing, in which signs convey whole concepts or individual sounds.

Champollion compiled a grammar of the ancient Egyptian language, which was published in 1836 after his death. The Egyptian alphabet was compiled.

EGYPTIAN ALPHABET

With the invention of papyrus, the writing of hieroglyphs was gradually replaced by simpler phonetic writing.

As such, the Egyptian alphabet did not exist. The ordering of Egyptian hieroglyphs into the alphabet has already been done by modern Egyptologists. They identified the 27 most commonly used hieroglyphs and put them together. These hieroglyphs are given in all textbooks on Egyptian writing.

Near each hieroglyph, its reading is given - the so-called transliteration.

Examples of entries using hieroglyphs

The names of the gods, unlike the names of the kings, were written in ancient Egyptian texts in the same way as the names of ordinary Egyptians - without highlighting them with a cartouche. Although, cartouche highlights are very rare. The most striking example of cartouche emphasizing the name of a god is the name of Aten in the Amarna era.

The Egyptians attached great importance to the aesthetics of writing words - they made up an ornamental rectangle. To do this, they could write hieroglyphs from right to left and vice versa, they could swap them, increase or decrease in size.

As a rule, the determinative followed the name of the god (although not always). Here are the most common determinatives of the gods:

With the help of Egyptian hieroglyphs, I tried to write words myself, as well as a small text using the phonetic writing technique.

In my work, I told a little about the history of Ancient Egypt, about my impressions of a trip to this country. Collecting material, I felt that I was in contact with something global, that I was learning something that I did not suspect at all.

How many new things I discovered for myself!

In ancient Egypt, writing arose earlier than in other countries. This was facilitated by the early emergence of the state and the development of knowledge.

It turns out that the Egyptians were the first people on the globe whose written signs conveyed sounds. But they did not become completely sound, because the Egyptians did not write vowels.

I learned that the Egyptians used several types of writing. But they still had attempts to use vowels! And it was a discovery for me that our letters go back to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs!

I described how the Egyptians made papyrus, how they trained scribes. He also spoke about the young French Egyptologist J.F. Champollion, who managed to unravel the mystery of the decipherment of hieroglyphs.

It was very interesting for me to solve and read cartouches and try to write various words, people's names using hieroglyphs.

I really hope that fifth graders, both current and future, will want to get acquainted with my work. It will help them expand their horizons about the culture of Egypt and will serve as one of the impetuses for further study of the beautiful science - history, which still holds many secrets and discoveries!

Ancient Egyptian writing is the most famous hieroglyphic writing system.

The deciphering 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 ancient Egyptian writing system appeared at the end of the 4th millennium BC. In a tomb dating back to the 33rd century BC, scientists in 1998 discovered as many as three hundred tablets covered with primitive hieroglyphs. This find is today considered the oldest example of Egyptian writing.

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

hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt photo

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 behind the mountains. Such a system is called ideography and is a step forward 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 subject. Some hieroglyphs denoted the first consonant in a word, others two or three consonants.

It is curious that the development of ancient Egyptian writing follows 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.

• With linear writing of hieroglyphs, the line most often went 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 at first it was necessary to read the upper signs, and then the lower ones;
• Determinatives (signs denoting grammatical categories) were placed after the main hieroglyph or before it, depending on this, the meaning of the written changed.

Hieratic and Demotic

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

hieratic letter photo

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

Deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs

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

The reading of 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 a 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.