The ancient Egyptian language is one of the very oldest languages of the world. Archaeological discoveries suggest that Egyptian hieroglyphs may be the oldest form of writing. Egyptian was spoken from about 4,000 BC until the 11th century AD. The Egyptian language has almost 5000 years of recorded history than any other human language.
The system of writing used in ancient Egypt is known as Hieroglyphics, also known as Hieroglyphs and was composed of drawings and pictures. The term 'hieroglyph' was first used by the Greeks, which has been derived from 'hieros', which means 'sacred' and 'glypho', which means 'engrave'. The Greeks used it because they had a similar kind of writing for their holy texts.
Egyptians called hieroglyphs "the words of God", and they were mainly used to decorate temples and monuments. Hieroglyphics were carved into or painted upon stone, as well as being written on papyrus with pen and ink.
Hieroglyphics were first used to maintain a record of the king's possessions. A picture of a cow or boat would be followed by a glyph representing a number. A thorough numerical system using glyphs was developed.
The ancient Egyptian word for hieroglyphs, literally translated as "language of the gods," indicates their importance. Priests used hieroglyphs to write down prayers, magical texts, and texts related to life after death and worshiping the gods. When preparing their tombs, many people had autobiographies and hieroglyphic guides of the after world written on the surfaces of tomb walls and on the insides of coffins. The Egyptians believed that these texts helped guide the dead through the afterlife.
The use of hieroglyphic inscriptions was not limited to religious purposes. Civil officials used them to write royal documents of long-term importance, to record historical events, and to document calculations, such as the depth of the Nile River on a specific day of the year. The Egyptians also used hieroglyphs to decorate jewelry and other luxury items.
A common feature of ancient writing is the absence of punctuation - there are often no blank spaces left between words and no periods to indicate the end of a sentence. Like other scripts from the Proto-Sinaitic period, the ancient Egyptian writing had only consonants.
Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. You can distinguish the direction in which the text is to be read because the human or animal figures always face towards the beginning of the line.
Cartouche hieroglyphics were used to form an oval shape inside which the birth names of pharaohs and queens, were written. The cartouche was thought to protect the person whose name it enclosed, as well as the site upon which it was placed. The word 'cartouche' was first applied to the cartouche symbol by the French soldiers who were part of the 1798 military campaign led by Napoleon Bonaparte into Egypt. the symbol resembled a gun cartridge, or bullets - the words gun cartridge was 'cartouche' in the French language. Cartouche hieroglyphs are a common feature of tombs of Egyptian royalty.
Over time writing became more widespread among Egyptians, and simplified glyphs forms were developed resulting in the demotic and hieratic writing, which transcribed far more easily and quickly to papyrus than complex hieroglyphs. When it first evolved hieratic writing was used solely for religious texts. Demotic writing was employed for more general forms of written communication, such as letters. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing.
The only people allowed to write and read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were scribes, who were thought to be professionals and held in high regard. The ancient Egyptians were of the belief that the scribes were given the ability to write by Thoth, whom they worshiped as the god of Hieroglyphics.
For many years the earliest known hieroglyphic inscription was the Narmer Palette, found during excavations at Hierakonpolis in the 1890s, which has been dated to ca. 3200 BCE It is very well-preserved, with excellent hieroglyphic characters thought to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under King Narmer. However, in 1998, a German archaeological team under Gunter Dreyer excavating at Abydos uncovered tomb U-j of a predynastic ruler, and recovered three hundred clay labels inscribed with porto-hieroglyphs, dating to the 33rd century BCE. The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa'ab, which dates from the 2nd dynasty.
In the following eras, about 800 hieroglyphs existed. By the Greco-Roman period, they numbered more than 5,000. Scholars generally believe that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably were, invented under the influence of the latter. However no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt.
in AD 391 the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I closed all pagan temples throughout the empire. This action terminated a four-thousand year old tradition and the message of the ancient Egyptian language was lost for 1500 years.
The importance of Egyptian hieroglyphics might never have been realized without the discovery in 1799 of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's troops at the Egyptian harbour of Rashid which now exits at the British museum. The stone contains hieroglyphic and Demotic writing, as well as classical Greek text. British scientist Thomas Young finished deciphering the demotic writing in 1814. French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion expanded on his work, translating many of the hieroglyphics by 1822. The Rosetta Stone is considered one of the most important artifacts towards understanding of the complexities of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Today, by virtue of the vast quantity of their literature, we know more about Egyptian society than most other ancient cultures.
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