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The Evolution of Ancient Egyptian Writing

The hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt developed through pictures and patterns tens of thousands of years ago, and around 4000 BC (6000 years ago) a system of hieroglyphs—holy scripts—was produced.

Like Sumerian, ancient Indian and Chinese oracle bone inscriptions, it was independently produced from the simplest pictures and patterns in primitive society, but this kind of writing was only a pictorial writing at first, and later developed into pictographs Characters—composed of three symbols: ideographic, phonetic and radical.

An ideogram is a pictorial representation of a concept or definition of something. However, ideograms cannot represent the pronunciation of words, so the ancient Egyptians invented phonograms. Phonetic symbols are also some graphics, and it has 24 consonants in total. On this basis, a large number of diphonic and triphonic sounds are formed.

For example, the mouth is a monadic sound and pronounces the sound of “Y”, the swallow is a diconic sound and pronounces the sound of “Wr”, the beetle is a triconic sound and pronounces the sound of “hpr”, etc., but these pronunciations all express more than one meaning, in order to distinguish , the ancient Egyptians invented radical symbols.

The role of this radical symbol is mainly to distinguish symbols of different categories, similar to the radical radicals in Chinese characters. Most Egyptian scripts have radical symbols. This script was often inscribed on temple walls, religious monuments, and papyrus, and was mainly used by monks and scribes. Egyptian hieroglyphs had an important influence on later alphabetic writing.

In different stages of ancient Egyptian history, Egyptian hieroglyphs changed many times with the needs of social life. The priestly script appeared in the Middle Kingdom, the civil script appeared in the later Egypt, and the Coptic script (the Egyptian script written with a modified Greek alphabet) appeared during the Roman rule. Due to various historical reasons, ancient Egyptian writing failed to develop into alphabetic writing.

However, ancient Egyptian writing had an important influence on the formation of the Phoenician alphabet. Around 1500-1000 BC, the Phoenicians who rose up on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean were trading with the Egyptians. At this time, the learned Phoenician monks rewritten simple hieroglyphs into orderly letters to help them trade.

Due to the complexity of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, with the demise of ancient Egypt, this kind of writing gradually became dead writing and was completely forgotten by people. It is precisely because of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the success of Champollion’s interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs that the history of ancient Egypt is fully revealed to us.

Font

There are three types of fonts in holy books: inscription style, monk style and public style. The inscription style was originally used by both refined and common people, and later became a solemn font carved on the stone walls of pyramids and temples, as well as painted on stone tools and pottery; it is also the general name of the three fonts. The appearance of its symbols is very similar to pictures, but in fact most of them have long lost their pictographic function.

The inscription style is a decorative orthodox style, and the monk style is a practical cursive style, which is mainly used for religious scriptures. The internal structure of the two fonts is exactly the same. The popular style, also known as the epistolary style or the vulgar style, is a simplified form of the monk style.

Due to the complexity of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, with the demise of ancient Egypt, this kind of writing gradually became dead writing and was completely forgotten by people. It is precisely because of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the success of Champollion’s interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs that the history of ancient Egypt is fully revealed to us.

The Spell

A spell was inscribed on the tomb of Tutankhamen, claiming revenge on those who trespassed on his tomb. On the afternoon of November 26, 1922, an expedition led by British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the tomb that had been sleeping for thousands of years.

On April 23, 1923, six months after the pharaoh’s tomb was opened, the mysterious death of Lord Carnarvon, a scientist who participated in the expedition, reminded many people of that curse, as did the media and the public. Conan Doyle (Conan Doyle), a famous British detective novelist and author of “Detective Sherlock Holmes”, said that he believed in the existence of this ancient curse.