Hieroglyphs are representations on stone, wood, or papyrus, of objects or parts of objects, including heavenly bodies, human beings in various attitudes, parts of the human body, quadrupeds and parts of quadrupeds, birds and parts of birds, fishes, reptiles, etc., geometric and fantastic forms, amounting in all to about a thousand different symbols.
More than six hundred are ideographic (idea-writing); i. e., the engraved or painted figure, either directly or figuratively conveys an idea which we express by a word composed of alphabetic signs. Thus, directly, the figure of a man means “man;” figuratively the same figure means “power.”
PHONETIC
HIEROGLYPHICS
About one hundred and thirty of the hieroglyphs are phonetic (sound-conveying); i. e., represent words (which are nothing but sound with a meaning attached thereto) of which the first letter is to be taken as an alphabetic sign, and thus phonetic hieroglyphs answer the same end as our letters of the alphabet. For example: in ideographic writing, a bird, a mason, a nest, mean “birds build nests;” in phonetic hieroglyphic the figures of a bull, imp, rope, door and ship would give the word “birds,” and the words “build” and “nests” would be expressed in the same round-about and clumsy fashion.
THE HISTORY OF EGYPT
From the old Greek writers and from records of the monuments we have a fairly complete story of this wonderful country and people.
FIRST MONARCH OF THE
OLD KINGDOM
The first king of Egypt, Menes, whose date is set at 3400 years before Christ, is said to have founded the city of Memphis, near the site of the modern Cairo, which became the capital of Egypt; Thebes, in Upper (or Southern) Egypt, afterwards taking this position.
The building of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, near Cairo, is ascribed to a king named Cheops (kē´ops) by Herodotus, otherwise called Khufu (kōō´fōō), according to the hieroglyphic royal name found inside the structure. He is believed to have reigned about the twenty-eighth century before Christ. Cheops was the second and most celebrated monarch in the fourth of the dynasties which ruled at Memphis. The third king in this list, Khafra (khaf´rä) also founded a pyramid, as did the fourth, Menkaura (men-kȧ-rä´) or Nycerinus, a sovereign beloved and praised in poetry for his goodness. His mummified remains are in the British Museum. In the sixth dynasty was a female sovereign noted for her beauty, named Nitocris, who built a pyramid and reigned at Memphis. The monarchy then was for some time divided, the chief power being held by the kings ruling at Thebes, in Upper Egypt, who developed great power, and constructed many notable works.