By Daniel Reynolds, ’23

(An excerpt of this essay was published in the May 2023 issue of Dragon Tales.)

When you text, read a sign, write a poem or read a confession of love, you’re just reading Hieroglyphs with a new haircut. However, the majority of people today do not understand the extent of Egyptian Hieroglyphs’ impact on the way we, and people all around the world, write today. To me, this topic is endlessly interesting due to my lifelong love for languages — but why should it matter for you, the reader? Without the spread of the descendants of Hieroglyphs, we wouldn’t have our writing system today, and neither would dozens of other languages from Greek to Arabic.

The influence of Egyptian Hieroglyphs on modern writing systems all began with the proto-Sinaitic writing system, found in ancient north Africa and the Levant, dated between the 19th and 16th centuries BCE. In “Proto-alphabetic inscriptions from the Wadi Arabah”, Brian Colless points out a transition point between Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the writing system believed to have been borrowed by the speakers of some northern Semitic language. Colless, comparing two texts from different locations, points out that “The most striking detail in these texts is a sign corresponding to an Egyptian hieroglyph ?,” which is the basis for the theory that Egyptian Hieroglyphs are the ancestors of these proto-Sinaitic glyphs. This hieroglyph, depicting the sun with the head and tail of a snake, is an ancestor of the latin letter S as well as many other symbols across other languages. Although we cannot be certain that Hieroglyphs were the ancestor of the proto-Sinaitic writing system, we do know that this ancient system gave rise to dozens of alphabets that are still around today.

The Proto-Sinaitic script gave birth to essentially all of our modern alphabetic systems as well as ancient ones, solidifying the impact of ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs on our world today. In “Proto-Sinaitic – Progenitor of the Alphabet”, Frank Simons makes the point that “proto-Sinaitic is very likely to have been the first truly alphabetic script.” This is important because in our modern day, a majority of written languages use alphabetic scripts, which at the time of proto-Sinaitic was a novel idea. Brian Colless provides a chart of correspondences from proto-Sinaitic to a variety of modern languages, showing that the Arabic, Latin, and Greek scripts as well as many others all come from one single parent. Although over thousands of years some letter shapes have become so different that one might not immediately realize that they are related (for example “?” and “m”), through historic evidence and the work of scholars over the centuries we are able to connect the culturally significant writing systems of alphabets from all around the world.

To go into detail more about the extent to which various writing systems are related, I will now present a comparison of the Latin, Arabic, Devanagari (used to write many Indian languages), and Mongolian scripts. The very first letter in the Latin alphabet that we use, “A”, is also related to Mongolian “?,” Arabic “?” and “?,” and Devanagari “?.” Additionally, both “I” and “J” are related to Mongolian “?,” Arabic “?,” and Devanagari “?.” From these examples alone, it should be clear that over time the writing systems have evolved to be quite different, even though their common roots are still clear. These are just examples, though, as Cyrillic (used to write Russian and many other languages), Greek, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, and Ge’ez all descend from proto-Sinaitic. Their common ancestor, though, came a bit later in the form of the Phoenecian alphabet (or more accurately, abjad), which directly developed from Proto-Sinaitic and thus ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs. But Hieroglyphs were not just a starting place for so many writing systems, they were a complex system of writing and culture and, most interestingly, art. (Colless)

Hieroglyphs were art as much as they were writing. They reflected the ideas and perceptions of those who wrote and read them, and so interwoven with the literal meaning of the symbols was a broader cultural and artistic context that gave life to the symbols written on the page or carved on the wall.

Daniel Reynolds, ’23

While Hieroglyphs were primarily a writing system, they also served a purpose as art and decoration, adorning temples and tombs. They were often painted in color, and, as pointed out in “Hieroglyphic Writing” from the Encyclopedia Britannica, “hieroglyphic signs [that] represented pictures of living beings or inanimate objects … retained a close connection to the fine arts.” Hieroglyphs changed with the changes in art style of the time, and while there were certain standards for how certain things were portrayed (e.g. eyes were always portrayed from the front [?, ?, ?] and hands were always shown from their palms [?, ?]), the styles changed with the popular views of art, in line with what the ancient scribes might have thought was appropriate for the time. Additionally, as Hieroglyphs were used for thousands of years, some of the ideas/concepts represented in a certain glyph became culturally irrelevant or even completely unrecognizable. For example, early representations of clubs as weapons stayed in use throughout most of the history of Hieroglyphs, even long after they fell out of any use as a weapon. As a result of this, older signs were likely misinterpreted in their origin and likely even re-interpreted as representing something else. Hieroglyphs were art as much as they were writing, “there appeared taut, slender hieroglyphic forms or sensuous, fleshy ones or even completely bloated characters, according to the art style of the period.” They reflected the ideas and perceptions of those who wrote and read them, and so interwoven with the literal meaning of the symbols was a broader cultural and artistic context that gave life to the symbols written on the page or carved on the wall.

So far, the written nature of Hieroglyphs has only been mentioned in passing. But how did they actually work? Well, for most of their history, Egyptian Hieroglyphs were what linguists would call a “mixed system,” mixed in the sense that it incorporated aspects of both logographic and phonetic writing systems, where a logograph is a writing system like Chinese where every symbol (roughly) represents a concept or idea as opposed to a phonetic system where every symbol corresponds to spoken sound in some way, although this is not always regular like in English where “e” can sound like “ee” or “eh” or make no sound at all like in page or mole. When an ancient Egyptian scribe wanted to talk about their profession, they might use the symbol “?” (scribe’s equipment, roughly pronounced “sashaw”) to represent the word “scribe,” followed by “?” (quail chick) to represent the “w” at the end or maybe “?” (folded cloth) to represent the “s” sound, and finally ? (seated man) to represent that the word refers to a person. This strategy was very widely used in ancient Egyptian texts, with a mix of symbols representing meaning and sound, allowing scribes to make sure their readers understood correctly. This also leads to a vast variety of spelling variations, with the same word being represented slightly differently even within the same text. This also poses a challenge for Egyptologists, as it can be quite difficult to tell apart a spelling mistake with simply a variation or stylistic choice. However, because being a scribe was a profession, all those who could read and write were highly skilled at it in ancient Egyptian society. (Davies)

Let’s read a sentence! Sentences are not usually spaced in ancient Egyptian, and the gaps in this sentence are an error of the computer’s font. First, I’ll separate it into words and put all the symbols next to each other to make it easier to read: “??????   ??   ??” Reading from left to right (and top to bottom if signs are stacked) we see “?” (n) and “?” (j). The “?” represents a seed-pod, but in this case it is an “ideogram,” a sign that portrays sound but not the meaning of what it represents. It usually is pronounced “n j m,” and the “n j” from before reinforce that this is the correct reading. Then we see “?” (m) which shows the final consonant sound of the word. This word, probably pronounced something like “najam,” means “sweet.” This is finally reinforced with the determinative “??” which shows that the word has to do with bees (honey, and sweetness). The next word starts with “?” (t), and then “?” which has the meaning of “honey.” Therefore the first symbol shows us that this is actually the word “bin” (pronounced like “bean”), as opposed to some other pronunciations that the “honey” symbol can have. Finally, there is “?” (t) and “?” (n) which gives the word “t n” which is “this” in the feminine gender. This was probably pronounced something like “tan” or “ton,” but we can’t be one hundred percent sure because ancient Egyptians did not write all of their vowels. This word is more like a suffix than an independent word, so it modifies “honey” to make “this honey.” So, we have our sentence! “sweet, this honey” or, more fluently, “this honey is sweet”! (“Lesson 6”)

Let’s go over one more sentence, just for fun. Once again, here is the sentence as it would be written traditionally, and here is the sentence written out and including spaces, as well as dashes for prefixes and suffixes: “???   ?-??? ?-?”. The first word is
“???” pronounced “n t f” (or “nataf”) which just means “he.” Then “?-???” is a compound word where “?” (m) means “in” or “at.” “?” (pronounced kind of like “hot,” where the “h” sound is pronounced from the throat like fogging up glass [the linguistic term is “pharyngeal”]) is a symbol that means “front,” and “?” (t) reinforces the pronunciation of the word. And the small mark “?” simply means that the word “front” is singular and not “fronts.” Finally, the word “??” is actually a word with a suffix. “?” (pronounced “hm” or “hom,” where the “h” sound is the same one as before) is a fuller’s club (the instrument of one who fulls cloth, meaning to pleat cloth to make the garment full) and represents a servant or, in a religious sense, priest or majesty. The suffix “?” (f) means “him” or “his,” in this case making the word mean “his majesty.” And there’s the full sentence! Literally “he in-front majesty-his” or in fluent English “he is in front of his majesty!” (“Lesson 4”)

Now that you have seen the impact of Egyptian Hieroglyphs and their cascading effect on the way we write today, as well as the ways in which they were used many thousands of years ago, all I hope is that you have come away with a greater appreciation for this writing system and all of the good it has put into the world. Although you, reader, may not be as enthusiastic about languages and diving into every tiny grammatical detail as I am, I hope this was an interesting insight and that you have been able to come away from this a little more knowledgeable. Although the topic I initially proposed is not necessarily a problem in everyday life, this paper serves to show that the knowledge of the history of languages and writing systems is quite under-represented in schooling and in the public’s knowledge. While I do not necessarily suggest that this topic be taught to everyone in school, I do hope that learning about ancient languages other than Latin and Greek can become more accessible for enthusiastic students everywhere, even before college.

Works Cited

Allen, James P. “Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs.” Internet Archive, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, https://archive.org/details/middleegyptianin0000alle.

Colless, Brian E. Proto-Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi Arabah, 2010, https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/bitstream/123456789/6753/1/proto-alphabetic-inscriptions-wadi-arabah.pdf. 

Davies, W. V. “Egyptian Hieroglyphs.” Internet Archive, London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Publications, 1 Jan. 1987, https://archive.org/details/egyptianhierogly0000davi_d6v2.

“Hieroglyphic Writing.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/hieroglyphic-writing. 

“Lesson 4.” Egyptian Hieroglyphs, https://www.egyptianhieroglyphs.net/egyptian-hieroglyphs/lesson-4/.

“Lesson 6.” Egyptian Hieroglyphs, https://www.egyptianhieroglyphs.net/egyptian-hieroglyphs/lesson-6/.

Simons, Frank. Proto-Sinaitic – Progenitor of the Alphabet. http://www.rosetta.bham.ac.uk/issue_09/simons_alphabet.pdf.