Thursday 10 March 2011

Hieroglyphics


From Egypt a card arrived that I thought was just a fun artist's impression of the hieroglyphic alphabet but when I looked it up, it seems to be pretty accurate.  The real thing is vastly more complicated though.

I remember learning about hieroglyphics at school, and how finding the Rosetta Stone made it possible to decipher the meaning.  Either I wasn't listening, or the teacher didn't make it clear, because I've always thought Egyptian hieroglyphics were more like Chinese characters than an alphabet, in other words they were little symbols of words rather than sounds.

7 comments:

  1. It is about as interesting as any card I have ever seen.

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  2. It's been too long since grade school or even high school for me to remember exactly, but I had the same impression you did. Love to be still learning! And postcards are inspiring it! Thanks for sharing this one; I love anything to do with letters & alphabets. (Retired teacher) :D

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  3. Great Card. I have been wanting to use some of the hierogylphs in a wall hanging for some time.

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  4. from my understanding, there are 3 kinds of symbol. the consonants as listed above; symbols for groups of letters without other meaning such as "MS" (this looks like a trident); and then symbols for words with meaning like "Ra" which is a picture of the sun. There are no individual symbols for vowels so this is guesswork when we're working out the names. I hope this makes sense (i'm no expert!)

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  5. Isn't the blogosphere wonderful, you pose a query and someone (in this case diocvutu) comes up with an answer. Hieroglyphs are both practical and beautiful.

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  6. It would make such a lovely cross stitch ( not for my ancient eyes, though! ).

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