Hieroglyphics (styled by the Egyptians skhai en neter tur—writing of sacred words) are composed of signs representing objects of the physical world, as animals, plants, stars, man and his different members, and various objects. They are pure or linear, the latter being a reduction of the former. The pure were always sculptured or painted. The linear were generally used in the earlier papyri, containing funeral rituals.
They have been divided into four classes:—1, Representational or ikonographic; 2, Symbolic or tropical; 3, Enigmatic; 4, Phonetic. From the examination of hieroglyphic inscriptions of different ages, it is evident that these four classes of symbols were used promiscuously, according to the pleasure and convenience of the artist.
1. Ikonographic, representational, or imitative hieroglyphics, are those that present the images of the things expressed, as the sun's disk to signify the sun, the crescent to signify the moon. These may be styled pure hieroglyphics.
2. The symbolical, or tropical (by Bunsen termed ideographic), substituted one object for another, to which it bore an analogy, as heaven and a star expressed night; a leg in a trap, deceit; two arms stretched towards heaven expressed the word offering; a censer with some grains of incense, adoration; a bee was made to signify Lower Egypt; the fore-quarters of a lion, strength; a crocodile, darkness. The following hieroglyphics were on the triumph Hall Thothmes III., and mean, after translating:
HIEROGLYPHICS.[ToList]
"I went: I order that you reduce and crush all the high officers of Tsahi. I cast them together with all their possessions at thy feet."
This kind of character appears to have been particularly invented for the expression of abstract ideas, especially belonging to religion or the royal power. These are the characters generally alluded to by the ancients when they speak of hieroglyphics, and are the most difficult of interpretation.
3. Enigmatic are those in which an emblematic figure is put in lieu of the one intended to be represented, as a hawk for the sun; a seated figure with a curved beard, for a god. These three kinds were either used alone, or in company with the phonetically written word they represented. Thus: 1. The word Ra, sun, might be written in letters only, or be also followed by the ikonograph, the solar disk (which if alone would still have the same meaning—Ra, the sun). So, too, the word "moon," Aah, was followed by the crescent. In these cases the sign so following the phonetic word has been called a terminative, from its serving to determine the meaning of what preceded it. We give here a few words translated: