Museum of Antiquity: A Description of Ancient Life

by L. W. Yaggy; T. L. Haines

"Out of bad comes good."[ToList]

Hieroglyphic writing was employed on monuments of all kinds, on temples as well as on the smallest figures, and on bricks used for building purposes. On the most ancient monuments this writing is absolutely the same as on the most recent Egyptian work. Out of Egypt there is scarcely a single example of a graphic system identically the same during a period of over two thousand years. The hieroglyphic characters were either engraved in relief, or sunk below the surface on the public monuments, and objects of hard materials suited for the glyptic art. The hieroglyphics on the monuments are either sculptured and plain, or decorated with colors. The colored are divided into two distinct classes, the monochromatic of one simple tone, and the polychromatic, or those which rendered with more or less fidelity the color of the object they were intended to depict. The hieroglyphic figures were arranged in vertical columns or horizontal lines, and grouped together as circumstances required, so as to leave no spaces unnecessarily vacant. They were written from right to left, or from left to right. The order in which the characters were to be read, was shown by the direction in which the figures are placed, as their heads are invariably turned towards the reader. A single line of hieroglyphics—the dedication of a temple or of any other monument, for example—proceeds sometimes one half from left to right, and the other half from right to left; but in this case a sign, such as the sacred tau, or an obelisk, which has no particular direction, is placed in the middle of the inscription, and it is from that sign that the two halves of the inscription take each an opposite direction.

The period when hieroglyphics—the oldest Egyptian characters—were first used, is uncertain. They are found in the Great Pyramid of the time of the fourth dynasty, and had evidently been invented long before, having already assumed a cursive style.[23] This shows them to be far older than any other known writing; and the written documents of the ancient languages of Asia, the Sanskrit and the Zend, are of a recent time compared with those of Egypt, even if the date of the Rig-Veda in the fifteenth century B.C. be proved. Manetho shows that the invention of writing was known in the reign of Athoth (the son and successor of Menes), the second King of Egypt, when he ascribes to him the writing of the anatomical books, and tradition assigned to it a still earlier origin. At all events, hieroglyphics, and the use of the papyrus, with the usual reed pen, are shown to have been common when the pyramids were built, and their style in the sculptures proves that they were then a very old invention. In hieroglyphics of the earliest periods there were fewer phonetic characters than in after ages, these periods being nearer to the original picture-writing. The number of signs also varied at different times; but they may be reckoned at from 900 to 1,000. Various new characters were added at subsequent periods, and a still greater number were introduced under the Ptolemies and Cæsars, which are not found in the early monuments; some, again, of the older times, fell into disuse.

Hieratic is an abbreviated form of the hieroglyphic; thus each hieroglyphic sign—ikonographic, symbolic, or phonetic—has its abridged hieratic form, and this abridged form has the same import as the sign itself of which it is a reduced copy. It was written from right to left, and was the character used by the priests and sacred scribes, whence its name. It was invented at least as early as the ninth dynasty (4,240 years ago), and fell into disuse when the demotic had been introduced. The hieratic writing was generally used for manuscripts, and is also found on the cases of mummies, and on isolated stones and tablets. Long inscriptions have been written on them with a brush. Inscriptions of this kind are also found on buildings, written or engraved by ancient travelers. But its most important use was in the historical papyri, and the registers of the temples. Most valuable information respecting the chronology and numeric systems of the Egyptians has been derived from them.

Demotic, or enchorial, is composed of signs derived from the hieratic, and is a simplified form of it, but from which figurative or ikonographic signs are generally excluded, and but few symbolical signs, relative to religion alone, are retained; signs nearly approaching the alphabetic are chiefly met with in this third kind of writing. It was invariably written, like the hieratic, from right to left. It is thus evident that the Egyptians, strictly speaking, had but one system of writing, composed of three kinds of signs, the second and third being regularly deduced from the first, and all three governed by the same fundamental principles. The demotic was reserved for general use among the Egyptians: decrees and other public acts, contracts, some funeral stelæ, and private transactions, were written in demotic. The intermediate text of the Rosetta inscription is of this kind. It is not quite certain when the demotic first came into use, but it was at least as early as the reign of Psammetichus II., of the twenty-sixth dynasty (B.C. 604); and it had therefore long been employed when Herodotus visited Egypt. Soon after its invention it was adopted for all ordinary purposes.

The chief objects of interest in the study of an Egyptian inscription are its historical indications. These are found in the names of Kings or of chief officers, and in the dates they contain. The names of Kings are always enclosed in an oval called cartouche. An oval contains either the royal title or prænomen, or the proper name or nomen of the King.

EGYPTIAN PILLAR.[ToList]

The dates which are found with these royal legends are also of great importance in an historical point of view, and monuments which bear any numerical indications are exceedingly rare. These numerical indications are either the age of the deceased on a funeral tablet, or the number of different consecrated objects which he has offered to the gods, or the date of an event mentioned in the inscription. Dates, properly so called, are the most interesting to collect; they are expressed in hieroglyphic cyphers, single lines expressing the number of units up to nine, when an arbitrary sign represents 10, another 100, and another 10,000.