The hieroglyphic writing
A characteristic feature of hieroglyphics is the absolute graphic diversity from all other scripts of antiquity.
Anyone can, by comparing a hieroglyphic text with other ancient writings, whether they had the function of a phonogram or an ideogram, realize that the former graphically represent the world around us in its many aspects (animals, plants, people, etc.) with images of absolute clarity and precision; the latter express signs that are incomprehensible in their entirety or almost in their entirety. What has been stated also applies to those writings represented by pictograms with an ideogram function (1).
These in fact are expressed with images that are in principle extremely coarse, with approximate graphic strokes and therefore difficult to interpret often even by the specialists themselves (2).
This peculiar characteristic possessed by hieroglyphs has not, in my opinion, been sufficiently pointed out in works of a popular character and especially the causes that led to this diversity.
Hieroglyphs originality marked a very significant moment in the history of writing, as will be explained below. At the dawn of civilization, man, when he felt the desire, the need, to express his thoughts with forms of writing did so, in every place and time, by using pictograms with the function of ideograms and always intended to express in writing his thoughts in a broad sense, without any restrictive form.
Over time, however, most writings underwent a slow evolutionary process from those having the function of ideogram to those having the function of phonogram, ergo conventional signs no longer adhering to reality.
Those who read in our alphabetic writing the letter "b" know that that sign represents a grapheme expressing a phoneme, to be exact a monoliter or monoconsonantal sign "b," period. No one, of course, will investigate the graphic aspect of that sign, which no longer adheres to the objective reality of images, and this is because the same has the exclusive function of conventionally expressing a consonantal sound today.
Cuneiform scripts, for example, coeval with hieroglyphs and used in the Akkadian language as well as in diplomatic dealings throughout the ancient East, express signs that are graphically utterly incomprehensible, and yet they turn out to be the reddere rationem of a long evolutionary process that traces its origin to Sumerian ideograms.
As a result of what has been said emerges in a general a slow evolution of the graphic features in most of the writings with gradual loss of the objective reality of the images. Obviously there were in these scripts more or less long periods I would say of "interregnum," in the sense of coexistence of signs having the function of ideogram and signs having the function of phonogram. Evolutionary process characterized by the transition from the logographic to the logophonetic system. Hieroglyphs also underwent this syntactic-grammatical evolution.
The great insight that Champollion had compared to other scholars of the time (Åkerblad, Young, etc.) was precisely to realize that in the context of a hieroglyphic script of the Middle Rhone (3), only a few signs take on the function of ideogram (4), the vast majority of them on the contrary have functions of phonogram, neither more nor less like our modern writings and, even more important because of what was previously mentioned, these signs no longer have adherence to the images they represent (5).
Beyond this evolutionary process, however, which is common to most writings, hieroglyphs differ from the others in one particular respect: they are special, I would say sector scripts, in the sense that their field of use was restricted exclusively to sacred purposes.
The Egyptians called them m-d-w-n-T-r (6) i.e., "word of god, word of divinity"; the same appellation of Greek origin jeros-gliphos takes on the meaning of carved sacredness in the sense of "sacred writings carved in stone."
Now for the cosmic conception of that ancient civilization where the primordial order of the world dictated by the Maat dictated that everything pertaining to the jeratic, to the sacred, should remain immovable, unchanging until the end of time, made these scriptures preserve throughout their very long existence almost intact their graphic guise (7). From what has been said a record in the history of man's writing: that of longevity. No writing in the world has endured so long without undergoing appreciable graphic changes.
But there is more.
There are no hieroglyphic writings made accurately and others crudely, roughly. Hieroglyphs turn out to be always made in an extremely accurate, precise guise whether carved in stone, generally in granite, or painted - limited to tombs - in garish colors still well preserved in many cases.
It took a long time to carve or paint them, and the scribes who made them were true artists. Such extreme accuracy, and even refinement, was always due to and I would say imposed by the requirement that these scriptures be sacred.
Hence another record of hieroglyphs in the history of writing, that of aesthetics, of beauty. Graphologists agree in attributing this primacy to hieroglyphs by virtue of the conspicuous number of signs expressing the world in its multiple configurations (8), for the extremely accurate graphic stroke, for the multiform colors, often true works of art, limited to writings found in tombs or in covered localities.
Thus two firsts in the history of writing, that of longevity and beauty and both springing from a single matrix: their exclusive use for sacred purposes, a unique peculiarity in the history of human writing. Of course, there existed a parallel writing to hieroglyphics, everyday writing for epistolary, commercial or general accounting uses, derived from these but with a simpler, more approximate graphic stroke. That form of writing called cursive, or encorial, as it was called in the nineteenth century, or even jeratic (9) then underwent further modifications in the seventh century B.C. in the Saidic period with the advent of Demotic, but that is another story.
Notes
- The pictogram is that mechanism of writing by the use of image; when this is what is intended to represent one has the ideogram.
- For in-depth examination and feedback cf. Aramaic, Ethiopic, Libyan, Typhinagh (ancient Tuareg script), Sanskrit, Amharic, Hebrew, cuneiform characters (Ugarit alphabet), Sumerian ideograms, Hittite hieroglyphs, ancient Chinese ideograms, Linear A and B, among many others.
- The classical period of the ancient Egyptian language, the one maximally studied and researched by Egyptologists.
- Scribes used to mark the sign with the function of an ideogram by affixing the diacritical stroke at the bottom or side.
- An example for all: the adjective good, beautiful, from which words such as Nefertari, Nefertiti etc . are derived is represented by an animal trachea (F35 nfr of the Gardiner list - triconsonantal or triliteral sign, conventionally read nefer).
- Transliteration adopted in the Manuel de Codage, term conventionally read medu-Necer.
- The earliest finds date from the beginning of the 4th millennium B.C., the last to the fourth century of our era.
- About six thousand signs have been found, which scholars have grouped by type of image by the use of appropriate coordinates designed to identify them easily (see lists by A.H.Gardiner and E.A.W. Budge).
- Word of Greek origin with meaning of sacred scriptures with a semantic value, however, different from that attributed to hieroglyphic scriptures. In the present case it should be understood simply as "scriptures of the priests." It is well to remember that in Pharaonic times the priestly caste, in addition to administering religious worship, was the mandatary on earth of the god Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing. The priestly caste was therefore the repository of knowledge understood in the broad sense and therefore had a monopoly on writing, which it accomplished by making use of scribes, mere technicians in its service.
