posted by Catherine on Apr 6
I bet you never thought you could learn to read basic hieroglyphics in a few hours?
How much more fun could your trip to the museum be if you could actually read some of the ancient writings on display?
There are many books out there that go into great detail about the origins of writing from the dawn of time and show you how certain signs have mutated over time and have 6 different versions – but ignore those ones.
What you need for some easy learning, is to focus on the ones that are most common and that haven’t changed over time, for example the names. So learn about how to identify the Pharaohs cartouches and the common determinative (the signs that mean whether the word you are looking at is the name of a man, lady, family, god or religious figure).
Reading The Script:
Now, firstly bear in mind that the ancient Egyptians wrote from right to left on the page – and all the ‘people’ and ‘animals/gods’ in their sentences are facing the way they are read. This means that all the characters like the chick, duck or lion will be facing to the right.
Secondly you need to remember that the hieroglyphics are based on sounds not letters, and that they didn’t really use vowels (but a, i, o, and u can sometimes be found) - and they never used the letter e. So the name Steven would be spelled out with the following sounds: S T V N and then reversed N V T S – and to show it was a man, a little glyph of a man would be shown at the end, facing the S.
Then you need to know that all their words are kept in groups and made to look ‘neat’ rather than written all in a row. This means that some of their symbols could be made larger or smaller, turned on their side or put underneath each other to make a nice shape!
And finally, some of the pictures aren’t meant to be read either, they are just there to help tell you what the rest of the word means – just like when we have 2 words spelled the same with 2 different meanings, like: (a) saw and (I) saw and (a blazing) row and row (a boat).
It all sounds a bit tricky, but it really isn’t the difficult once you start using the common sounds like ‘n’ and ‘r’ over and over again in the basic words.
Practicing It:
Now, get yourself a basic book like a ‘for Dummies’ version to get your head around the basics, then start practicing it out on images from other books to give yourself a challenge.
Once you get to the level when you can tell if it about a God, or just a list of property, then you can really add to your trip to the Museum.
There is really nothing better than actually deciphering a hidden language – and to know that someone originally wrote it down at least 2000 years ago – but maybe as long as 5000 years ago!
And, it might make watching those old Indiana Jones movies more fun – you can check up on him to make sure he is translating it properly!
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