Aspects of the Script Orientation of the Signs

The hieroglyphic script is extremely flexible, and was written both in rows (horizontally) and columns (vertically). Furthermore, the direction of the signs could change, that is, the texts could be written from left-to-right, as well as from right-to-left.

To find the direction and the beginning of a text, there are some very simple rules:

• As a rule, the Egyptians never wrote from bottom to top, although it could occur that a sign was written below another sign, even if it belonged above it. This was usually done for aesthetic reasons, to obtain a good layout of the texts (without ugly white spaces).

• To discover the direction of writing, you should look at the signs with an obvious front and back end (e.g. human forms and animals). These signs always look to the beginning of the text.

• When the text is a legend to some picture (e.g. in wall paintings), the depicted god or person looks to the beginning of his/her text. The hieroglyphic signs are then oriented in the same direction as the figure they accompany.

The picture above demonstrates this fact. The text in frame A belongs to Nefertari, while the text in frame B is spoken by Toth. Notice the orientation of the signs.

The Arrangement of Signs

The aesthetic look of the text formed an important criterium for the placement of the signs with respect to each other. The Ancient Egyptians attempted to eliminate empty spaces in the text as much as possible (horror vacui). To this end, they divided the text lines in squares, in which the signs were arranged. As an example, the word for beautiful would never be written as in (a) below, but instead as demonstrated in (b) with a nicely filled square.

The Egyptian Signs

The hieroglyphs can be divided into two categories: signs with a pictorial value (ideograms) and signs with a phonetic value (phonograms).

• Ideograms Ideograms are signs that depict the object that is drawn. They are direct examples of an object or an action. Some signs have a symbolic value, e.g. a sceptre to denote power. The hieroglyphs above are clear examples of ideograms. These signs communicate the following ideas:

  • (a) face

  • (b) to walk, to run

  • (c) house

  • (d) duck

Ideograms can depict objects and concrete concepts. They are however not suited to communicate abstract concepts like son, love or large. To depict such concepts, the Egyptians made use of phonograms (according to the rebus principle: the concept to communicate sounds like the written word).

• Phonograms Phonograms are signs that indicate a sound, without any further relation to the object that is depicted. The word for son e.g. sounds like the word for duck. As such, the sign (d) is used for both words. Depending on the context it is used as a phonogram (son) or as an ideogram (duck). As such, phonograms are signs that have no ideographic value, but that are merely used to depict a set of consonants.

Hieroglyphic signs can have the value of 1, 2 or more consonants. Vocals were not recorded in the hieroglyphic script.

To facilitate the search in dictionaries and to make it possible to easily read Egyptian texts, the hieroglyphic signs are usually converted to our own alphabet (transcription). The lack of vowels however makes it difficult to speak the language. To circumvent this problem, the following rules are used:

• certain consonants are articulated as though they were vowels

• other consonants are attached together with a letter e

With this system one arrives at words that are connected by vowels. Take the word for beautiful as an example: its transcription of the hieroglypic signs is nfr. To ease the pronunciation of these three consonants, we bind them together with e-sounds, which leads to nefer.

Obviously, our pronunciation bears no relation with the original pronunciation of the Egyptian language. It is solely a convention, to facilitate communication among us modern people.