Essay On Hieroglyphs

Introduction

The hieroglyphs is a member of the afro-asiatic family, which is a group of languages spoken in northern Africa and the middle east such as Arabic, Hebrew and berber. The word hieroglyphs came from a Greek term which means sacred carving. The history of the Egyptian language can be divided into five periods. Starting from 3000 BC the old Egyptian language was used by ancient Egyptians, followed by middle and late Egyptian. Then after that came the period of the demotic 700 BC to 300AD and the Coptic 300 BC to 1500 AD. The middle Egyptian period language is known to be the classical Egyptian language, in which many texts especially religious were written in this language. The last period of the Egyptian language, Coptic, was widely

There are, however, several hypotheses that have been put forth. One of the most convincing views claims that they derive from rock pictures produced by prehistoric hunting communities living in the dessert west of the Nile, who were apparently familiar with the concept of communicating by means of visual imagery. Some of the motifs depicted on these rock images are also found on pottery vessels of early Pre-dynastic cultures in Egypt.

The logograms, also called ideograms, are symbols or signs that represent objects. Logograms are therefore the most frequently used nouns; they are always accompanied by a mute vertical stroke indicating their status as a logogram. Theoretically, all hieroglyphs would have the ability to be used as logograms. Moreover, phonograms are signs read independent of their visual characteristics. Phonograms can be written as one or more consonants. Unilateral phonograms (one consonants) are considered letters of the alphabet that represent the 23 consonants in the Egyptian language. In addition, determinatives are unpronounced signs that served to give some information about word’s meaning. The determinatives came last in the spelling of a word, after the phonetic