; of all actions of the mouth—eating and speaking, likewise silence and hunger.
; ripple-lines; of liquid.
; hide; of animals, also leather, &c.
; of plants and fibres.
; of flesh.
; a sealed papyrus-roll; of books, teaching, law, and of abstract ideas generally.
In the earliest inscriptions the use of determinatives is restricted
to
the
,
, &c.,
after proper names, but it developed immensely
later, so that few words beyond the particles were written
without them in the normal style after the Old Kingdom.
Some few signs ideographic of a group of ideas are made to express
particular words belonging to that group by the aid of phonograms
which point out the special meaning. In such cases the ideogram
is not merely a determinative nor yet quite a word-sign.
Thus
=
“Semite,”
=
“Libyan,” &c.,
but
cannot stand by itself for the name of any
particular foreign people. So also in monogram
is šm “go,”
is “conduct.”
Orthography.—The most primitive form of spelling in the hieroglyphic
system would be by one sign for each word, and the monuments
of the Ist Dynasty show a decided tendency to this mode.
Examples of it in later times are preserved in the royal cartouches,
for here the monumental style demanded special consciseness. Thus,
for instance, the name of Tethmosis III.—MN-ḪPR-Rꜥ—is spelled
(as Rꜥ is the name of the sun-god, with customary
deference to the deity it is written first though pronounced last).
A number of common words—prepositions, &c.—with only one
consonant are spelled by single alphabetic signs in ordinary
writing. Word-signs used singly for the names of objects are
generally marked with
in classical writing, as—
, ỉb, “heart,”
, ḥr, “face,” &c.
But the use of bare word-signs is not common. Flexional consonants
are almost always marked by phonograms, except in very
early times; as when the feminine word
= z.t, “cobra,” is spelled
.
Also, if a sign had more than one value, a phonogram
would be added to indicate which of its values was intended:
thus
in
is św, “he,”
but in
it is śtn, “king.”
Further,
owing to the vast number of signs employed, to prevent confusion
of one with another in rapid writing they were generally provided
with “phonetic complements,” a group being less easily misread
than a single letter. E.g.
, wz, “command,” is regularly written
, wz (w);
but
, ḥz, “white,” is written
, ḥz(z).
This
practice had the advantage also of distinguishing determinatives
from phonograms. Thus the root or syllable ḥn is regularly written
to avoid confusion with the determinative
.
Redundance
in writing is the rule; for instance,
b is often spelled
(b)b’(’).
Biliteral phonograms are very rare as phonetic complements,
nor are two biliteral phonograms employed together in writing the
radicals of a word.
Spelling of words purely in phonetic or even alphabetic characters
is not uncommon, the determinative being generally added. Thus
in the pyramidal texts we find
ḫpr, “become,” written
in one copy of a text, in another
.
Such variant spellings are very
important for fixing the readings of word-signs. It is noteworthy
that though words were so freely spelled in alphabetic characters,
especially in the time of the Old Kingdom, no advance was ever
made towards excluding the cumbersome word-signs and biliteral
phonograms, which, by a judicious use of determinatives, might well
have been rendered quite superfluous.
Abbreviations.—We find
,
strictly ꜥnḫ z’ ś standing for the
ceremonial viva! ꜥnḫ wz’ śnb. “Life, Prosperity and Health,”
and in course of time
was used in accounts instead of
dmz, “total.”
Monograms are frequent and are found from the earliest times.
Thus
,
mentioned above are monograms, the association
of
and
having no pictorial meaning. Another common
monogram is
, i.e.
and
for Ḥ·t-Ḥrw “Hathor.”
A word-sign may be compounded with its phonetic complement,
as
ḥz “white,”
or with its determinative, as
ḥz “silver.”
The table on the opposite page shows the uses of a few of the
commoner signs.
The decorative value of hieroglyphic was fully appreciated in
Egypt. The aim of the artist-scribe was to arrange his variously
shaped characters into square groups, and this could be done in great
measure by taking advantage of the different ways in which many
words could be spelt. Thus ḥs could be written
, ḥsy
, ḥs-f
, ḥs-n-f
.
But some words in the classical writing
were intractable from this point of view. It is obvious that the alphabetic
signs played a very important part in the formation of the
groups, and many words could only be written in alphabetic signs.
A great advance was therefore made when several homophones were
introduced into the alphabet in the Middle and New Kingdoms,
partly as the result of the wearing away of old phonetic distinctions,
giving the choice between
and
,
and
,
and
,
and
,
and
.
In later times the number of
homophones in use increased greatly throughout the different
classes, the tendency being much helped by the habit of fanciful
writing; but few of these homophones found their way into the
cursive script. Occasionally a scribe of the old times indulged
his fancy in “sportive” or “mysterious” writing, either inventing
new signs or employing old ones in unusual meanings. Short
sportive inscriptions are found in tombs of the XIIth Dynasty;
some groups are so written cursively in early medical papyri,
and certain religious inscriptions in the royal tombs of the
XIXth and XXth Dynasties are in secret writing. Fanciful
writing abounds on the temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman
periods.
Palaeography
Hieroglyphic.—The main division is into monumental or epigraphic
hieroglyphs and written hieroglyphs. The former may be rendered
by the sculptor or the painter in stone, on wood, &c., with great
delicacy of detail, or may be simply sunk or painted in outline.
When finely rendered they are of great value to the student investigating
the origins of their values. No other system of writing
bears upon its face so clearly the history of its development as the
Egyptian; yet even in this a vast amount of work is still required
to detect and disentangle the details. Monumental hieroglyphic
did not cease till the 3rd century A.D. (Temple of Esna). The written
hieroglyphs, formed by the scribe with the reed pen on papyrus,
leather, wooden tablets, &c., have their outlines more or less abbreviated,
producing eventually the cursive scripts hieratic and demotic.
The written hieroglyphs were employed at all periods, especially
for religious texts.
Hieratic.—A kind of cursive hieroglyphic or hieratic writing is
found even in the Ist Dynasty. In the Middle Kingdom it is well
