Project “History of Writing” Ancient Egypt. How did the Egyptians move from representing a whole word with an icon to representing an individual sound with an icon? Modern approach to character coding

How many hieroglyphs were there in Egyptian writing? How did the Egyptians move from representing an entire word with an icon to representing a single sound?

What was the difficulty in reading Egyptian hieroglyphs?

Phoenicia

1. Why did Phoenician traders need writing?
2. Which writing system - Egyptian, Babylonian or Phoenician - was simpler?
3. What each icon corresponded to Phoenician script? What can it be called?
4. How many letters are there in the Phoenician alphabet?
5. Which one main drawback Phoenician script?
6. Who improved the Phoenician alphabet? How?
7. What is the origin of the word "alphabet"?

11. The writing systems of the first civilizations are diverse and determined by the climate and resources of the states. So in Egypt these were hieroglyphs written on papyrus, in Me

Sopotamia - icons painted on a clay tablet. Indicate the name of the writing system in Mesopotamia.

12. First stone tools labor were often processed to improve work efficiency. To do this, small plates were plucked from their working surface, making the tool even sharper. What type of processing are we talking about?

13. A variety of women's jewelry were popular and widespread among Eastern Slavs. Young girls often wove bronze and silver jewelry into their hair at their temples. Indicate the name of the decorations.

14. In the Middle Ages and antiquity, it became widespread unusual look washbasin made in the form of various animals. What was the name of this vessel?

15. As a result of life activity, ash from fireplaces with the remains of shards of vessels and animal bones accumulated on the sites of settlements of the Bronze and Iron Ages. What are such accumulations called in archeology?

16. When carrying out mummification in Ancient Egypt, to prepare the body for embalming, internal organs the deceased were removed and placed in a special vessel designed for their storage. Such a vessel was installed next to the sarcophagus of the deceased. Indicate the name of the vessel.

17. A number of Iron Age cultures are characterized by the appearance of a metal vessel in the shape of a bucket. Its main purpose is ceremonial. Indicate the name of the vessel.

18. To make tools, in the Stone Age a large fragment of flint was used, from which flakes were broken off using a flake. Sometimes it was a by-product of tool production, but with appropriate design it could have independent significance. Indicate the name of this flint fragment.

19. In Mayan cultures, as well as in Buddhist civilizations, a type of ritual structure consisting of a single flat stone pillar or slab with an inscription is widely known. Indicate the name of this monument.

20. The beginning of underwater archeology is associated primarily with the excavations of the Antikythera ship at the beginning of the 20th century. Along with the statues of the “philosopher’s head”, Hercules and many other objects found on it, the main artifact of the found ship is the “Antikythera mechanism”. Name the Greek archaeologist who led the first excavations in underwater archeology.

21. Using archaeological data, tell us about the timber-frame archaeological culture.

For a long time, a person only needed his memory to preserve all existing knowledge, but the world does not stand still, and events, facts, discoveries became more and more numerous, which means that certain ways of recording them were required, which is why Sumerian cuneiform arose, Chinese, Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mycenaean linear writing. Particularly interesting in this list is the hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt as one of the most ancient and original.

Features of the ancient Egyptian language

It should be noted right away that this term is artificial. The presence of an ancient Egyptian language presupposes the existence of a simply modern Egyptian language. But the reality looks different. In modern Egypt they speak one of the dialects of Arabic. The history of hieroglyphs in the Egyptian language was interrupted in the 4th century. Instead, Coptic began to be used with its simpler writing. Since then, even the skills of reading texts carved on the walls of Egyptian temples have been lost. Already in the time of Herodotus, hieroglyphs were considered a certain part of the cult, hence the very name of this type of writing. The word "hieroglyph" is formed from two Greek roots, which, when translated into Russian, can result in the phrase "sacred writing."

The Russian language, which has existed for a little more than one millennium, has by now changed a lot in comparison with the dialect, for example, of the 10th century. Especially global changes must have occurred in ancient Egyptian. There are several stages in its development:

1. Language Ancient kingdom(XXXII-XXII centuries BC).
2. Classical or Middle Egyptian language (XXII-XVI centuries BC).
3. New Egyptian language (XVI-VIII centuries BC).
4. Demotic language (8th century BC - 5th century AD).

Most of the work has been written on the classical ancient Egyptian language, since it is from this period that the largest number of records have survived.

Hieroglyphics, hieratic and demotic

To record their texts, the Egyptians used different ways. Hieroglyphics is the most ancient of them, originating in pictographic records, that is, picture writing (that is, to write the word “man,” a person was drawn). For the wall paintings of the majestic Egyptian temples and palaces, hieroglyphics came in handy; ancient scribes carved out the symbols and then painted them.

Texts on papyrus were written in hieratic script, which basically repeated the outlines of hieroglyphs, but in essence it was simpler.

Gradually, with the development of language and the increase in the number of economic inscriptions, an even simpler way of recording information was required. This is how demotic writing arose, a kind of Egyptian cursive writing. This happened at the turn of the VIII-VII centuries. BC e. It is difficult to guess from the demotic inscriptions that these are the same hieroglyphs. The outlines of the characters are more reminiscent of Aramaic writing.

Deciphering Egyptian texts

The story of how Egyptian hieroglyphs were solved begins with the Egyptian campaign of Napoleon Bonaparte. The military operation ended in failure, but the inquisitive French copied several inscriptions in the ancient Egyptian language. In 1799, it was discovered on which the decree of Pharaoh Ptolemy V was written in hieroglyphs, hieratic, demotic and provided parallel translation into Greek.

Thanks to Greek translation The content of the text became known, but it was almost impossible to correlate it with hieroglyphs. Jean-François Champollion took on the task of solving the mystery. He came to the conclusion that hieroglyphs cannot be either word-signs or symbols - there are too many of them. Having counted all the signs, he found that 1419 hieroglyphs corresponded to 486 Greek words.

It is unknown whether the scientist would have been able to decipher the Egyptian writing if not for the peculiar clue left by the ancient scribes. As a special sign, they used a cartouche - a frame in which the name of the pharaoh was outlined. There were two such cartouches in the text: Ptolemy and Cleopatra. By correlating these inscriptions with the Greek text, Champollion found out the meaning of several signs at once.

Working on the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs, Champollion fully mastered the art of translating texts from hieratic to demotic, and vice versa. He established the basic patterns by which the hieroglyph turned into an illegible icon, and also laid the foundations for the study of ancient Egyptian phonetics - the Greek version again helped in this, giving correspondence between the Egyptian sound and the Greek. By comparing and analyzing hieroglyphs in cartouches - for this purpose, Champollion collected all available copies of ancient Egyptian inscriptions - the scientist managed to reconstruct the "alphabet".

About the Egyptian "alphabet"

Hieroglyphs are capable of conveying both individual sounds and their combination, and even entire words. That is why the word “alphabet” is given in quotation marks. Nothing in common with the Russians we are used to or in English letters, denoting one sound with all their pronunciation options, Egyptian writing did not have.

It is difficult to say for sure how many hieroglyphs there were in Egyptian writing. There is a whole range of reasons for this. First, the ancient Egyptian language existed for a long period of time, much longer than any of the languages ​​currently in use. This led to variations in spelling. Secondly, the origins of hieroglyphics are in pictography, so - especially in the early stages of the existence of a language - it is difficult to say when an icon is just a picture and corresponds to a word or even a phrase, and when it has already evolved into a written symbol. Thirdly, despite significant advances in archaeology, it cannot be said that absolutely all ancient texts are in the hands of scientists. It is simply impossible to guess what symbols might have been used in the lost records.

One way or another, science knows approximately five thousand hieroglyphs. But not all of them were actively used in writing. Some of them relate to individual stages in the history of Egypt, others are variations. In order to write a text correctly, the ancient scribe needed to know the outline of at least seven hundred Egyptian hieroglyphs with their meanings.

Types of hieroglyphs

As already noted, the “hieroglyphic alphabet” is a very conditional concept. Unlike modern languages, where it is customary to distinguish vowels and consonants, and in extreme cases - diphthongs, the classification of ancient Egyptian writings is carried out according to a completely different principle.

First of all, monoconsonant hieroglyphs are distinguished, denoting one consonant sound. On at the moment Historical linguistics reconstructs thirty consonant sounds. This determines how many Egyptian hieroglyphs were required to write them: exactly thirty.

The second group of signs are two- and three-consonant, conveying, respectively, the most frequent combinations of two and three consonant sounds. Most often, such signs were used to write inflections and function words, but there are also roots containing hieroglyphs of this type.

Since long words were not favored by the ancient Egyptians, it is not far from a hieroglyph that conveys three consonant sounds at once to writing an entire word in one sign. Such hieroglyphs are called ideograms. They were used to write either one-of-a-kind concepts (for example, “pharaoh”), or to write the most frequently used words in order to save writing material.

Finally, the fourth group of hieroglyphs was intended to clarify the meaning of the word. Many of them, especially when the vowels in writing were ignored, were pronounced and written the same way. To eliminate synonymy, Egyptian scribes put special signs- determiners. In essence they are ideograms.

During the Hellenistic period, the Egyptians had to deal with sounds that existed in Greek but were absent in their native language. Therefore, new symbols appear. The appearance of special signs for vowel sounds dates back to the same era: the scribes of that era had already begun to forget the true pronunciation of ancient hieroglyphs, so they took care of preserving it.

Ligatures

Papyrus was the main writing material. Its production was quite labor-intensive, so there was never enough of it, especially in dry years. To this end, Egyptian scribes sought ways to reduce the number of signs required. In addition to piling hieroglyphs on top of each other or inscribing one into another, ligatures were used, that is, combinations of two or more characters with to varying degrees stylization. Their existence and diversity makes it much more difficult to answer the question of how many hieroglyphs there were in Egyptian writing.

Most often, ligatures were created from characters of similar meaning. At the same time, their phonetic content was not taken into account. An example is the ideogram “legs”. It was combined with a phonogram that clarified the morphological meaning of the word, and a ligature was obtained, meaning “to go.” Sometimes even determiners were combined into ligatures. This happened when it was necessary to express an abstract concept or convey a borrowing from another language.

It should be noted that ligatures were not the only way to save papyrus. If a word began with the same hieroglyph as the previous one, then one of the characters was simply thrown out.

The complexities of the ancient Egyptian language

Concluding the description of the features of the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian script, it should be noted that their exact pronunciation is unknown to anyone. Scientists use a conventionally accepted reconstruction based on several principles. So, between all hieroglyphs that convey a certain number of consonant sounds, an auxiliary “e” is inserted. For example, a group of hieroglyphs read as mmfst would be pronounced in Russian as "memfeset". One can only guess what vowels were actually pronounced.

The text recording system caused a lot of problems for scientists. If Russians write from left to right, and Arabs from right to left, then the Egyptians wrote as they pleased. The text could be oriented according to the two already mentioned strategies, and could be written from top to bottom and bottom to top, and to save space and for aesthetic reasons, hieroglyphs could be written on top of each other or fit into one another.

Egyptian hieroglyphs and their meaning

Perhaps since high school, where acquaintance with Egyptian writings takes place for the first time, everyone wants to know how the inscriptions of Ancient Egypt are read. It should be borne in mind that any transcription in Russian, as in any other language, will be very approximate, since the phonemic composition of the speech of a modern person and an ancient Egyptian is very different.

Some information about morphology and grammar

To modern man it seems obvious that it is necessary to separate words with spaces and punctuation marks, write a new phrase and proper names With capital letter, follow the paragraphs. The ancient Egyptians did not know such subtleties. The only way to determine where one word ends and another begins is the determiner. Together with the difficulties of text orientation already described, this caused significant difficulties for the first researchers of the ancient Egyptian language.

When translating Egyptian hieroglyphs into Russian, one should also take into account that their morphological structure varies greatly. The Russian language is characterized by a rich system of declension of nominal parts of speech, has categories of verb tense and aspect, and has an apparatus of function words. The Egyptian language did not know any of these categories in their modern understanding. To distinguish an object from a subject, and to correctly place emphasis in a phrase, the Egyptians used words that vaguely resemble modern particles. The situation with verbs was even more complicated. In fact, there was only one time. Features of the course of the action, that is, whether it has already been committed, or is happening now, or will happen in the future, were described using auxiliary verbs, and even then this method finally took shape by the period of the New Egyptian language. Until then, all these nuances had to be learned from the context.

Ancient Egyptian numerals

The Egyptians were outstanding mathematicians. They knew how to calculate the areas of figures and were fluent in the technique of operations on fractions. For all this, they needed special signs to write numbers and arithmetic operations. The Egyptians did not have a special sign for zero.

Fractions were transmitted in a special way. If the numerator in it was greater than one, then such a fraction was represented as a sum of shares.

In addition, there was another way to write fractions with a unit numerator. For this, the Eye of Thoth was used - a symbol of a deity highly revered in Egypt. Fractions with a denominator of two to any integer power corresponded to some element of the eye. For example, a quarter was associated with the pupil, so it was written in the form of a circle.

Thus, with the help of hieroglyphs, Egyptian scribes could record a wide variety of texts for posterity: from sacred to scientific.

Egyptian hieroglyphs, pictures of which will be given below, constitute one of the writing systems used almost 3.5 thousand years ago. In Egypt, it began to be used at the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. e. This system combined elements of phonetic, syllabic and ideographic styles. hieroglyphs were pictorial images supplemented with phonetic symbols. As a rule, they were carved on stones. However, Egyptian hieroglyphs could also be found on papyri and wooden sarcophagi. The pictures that were used in the drawing were similar to the objects that they represented. This made it much easier to understand what was written. Later in the article we will talk about what this or that hieroglyph meant.

The mystery of the appearance of signs

The history of the system goes deep into the past. Over a very long period, one of the ancient monuments writing of Egypt was the Narmer palette. It was believed that it depicted the earliest signs. However, German archaeologists in 1998 discovered three hundred clay tablets during excavations. They depicted proto-hieroglyphs. The signs date back to the 33rd century BC. e. The very first sentence is believed to be inscribed on a Second Dynasty seal from the tomb of Pharaoh Seth-Peribsen at Abydos. It should be said that initially images of objects and living beings were used as signs. But this system was quite complex, as it required certain artistic skills. In this regard, after some time the images were simplified to the necessary contours. Thus, hieratic writing appeared. This system was used mainly by priests. They wrote inscriptions on tombs and temples. The demotic (folk) system, which appeared somewhat later, was easier. It consisted of circles, arcs, and dashes. However, recognizing the original characters in this letter was problematic.

Improving signs

Egyptian hieroglyphs were originally pictographic. That is, the words looked like visual drawings. Next, a semantic one was created. With the help of ideograms, it was possible to write down individual abstract concepts. So, for example, the image of mountains could mean both part of the relief and a mountainous, foreign country. The image of the sun meant “day”, since it shines only during the day. Subsequently, ideograms played a significant role in the development of the entire Egyptian writing system. Somewhat later, sound signs began to appear. In this system, more attention was paid not so much to the meaning of the word, but to its sound interpretation. How many hieroglyphs are there in Egyptian writing? During the New, Middle and Old Kingdoms, there were approximately 800 signs. Under Greco-Roman rule, there were already more than 6,000.

Classification

The problem of systematization remains unresolved to this day. Wallis Budge (English philologist and Egyptologist) was one of the first scholars to catalog Egyptian hieroglyphs. His classification was based on the external characteristics of the signs. After him, in 1927, a new list was compiled by Gardiner. His "Egyptian Grammar" contained a classification of signs also according to external signs. But in his list the signs were divided into groups, which were designated in Latin letters. Within categories, signs were assigned serial numbers. Over time, the classification compiled by Gardiner began to be considered generally accepted. The database was replenished by adding new characters to the groups he defined. Many subsequently discovered signs were assigned additional letter values ​​after the numbers.

New codification

Simultaneously with the expansion of the list compiled on the basis of Gardiner’s classification, some researchers began to make assumptions about the incorrect distribution of hieroglyphs into groups. In the 80s, a four-volume catalog of signs, divided by their meaning, was released. Over time, this classifier also began to be rethought. As a result, a grammar compiled by Kurt appeared in 2007-2008. He corrected Gardiner's four-volume work and introduced a new division into groups. This work is undoubtedly very informative and useful in translation practice. But some researchers have doubts about whether the new codification will take root in Egyptology, since it also has its own shortcomings and flaws.

Modern approach to character coding

How is Egyptian hieroglyphs translated today? In 1991, when already computer technology were sufficiently developed, the Unicode standard was proposed for encoding characters of various languages. IN latest version Basic Egyptian hieroglyphs are present. These signs are in the range: U+13000 - U+1342F. Today, various new catalogs continue to appear in electronic form. Decoding Egyptian hieroglyphs into Russian is carried out using the graphic editor Hieroglyphica. It should be noted that new catalogs continue to appear to this day. Due to enough a large number It is still not possible to fully classify their signs. In addition, from time to time, researchers discover new Egyptian hieroglyphs and their meanings, or new phonetic symbols for existing ones.

Direction of the characters

Most often, the Egyptians wrote in horizontal lines, usually from right to left. It was rare to see a direction from left to right. In some cases, the signs were positioned vertically. In this case, they were always read from top to bottom. However, despite the predominant direction from right to left in the writings of the Egyptians, for practical reasons, in modern research literature, the style from left to right is adopted. The signs that depicted birds, animals, and people were always facing the beginning of the line. Top sign had primacy over the bottom. The Egyptians did not use sentence or word separators, meaning there was no punctuation. When writing, they tried to distribute calligraphic characters without spaces and symmetrically, forming rectangles or squares.

Typeface system

Egyptian hieroglyphs can be divided into two large groups. The first includes phonograms (sound signs), and the second includes ideograms (semantic signs). The latter were used to designate a word or concept. They, in turn, are divided into 2 types: determiners and logograms. Phonograms were used to designate sounds. This group included three types of signs: three-consonant, two-consonant and one-consonant. It is noteworthy that among the hieroglyphs there is not a single image. Thus, this writing is a consonantal system, like Arabic or Hebrew. The Egyptians could read the text with all the vowels, even if they were not written down. Each person knew exactly which sound should be placed between which consonants when pronouncing a particular word. But the absence of vowel marks is serious problem for Egyptologists. For a very long period (almost the last two millennia), the language was considered dead. And today no one knows exactly how the words sounded. Thanks to philological research, it was, of course, possible to establish the approximate phonetics of many words and to understand the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs in Russian, Latin, and other languages. But this kind of work is today a very isolated science.

Phonograms

Monoconsonant characters made up the Egyptian alphabet. In this case, hieroglyphs were used to indicate 1 The exact names of all monoconsonant signs are unknown. The order of their occurrence was developed by Egyptologists. Transliteration is carried out using If there are no corresponding letters or several of them are needed, then diacritics are used for designation. Biconsonant sounds are designed to convey two consonants. This type of hieroglyphs is quite common. Some of them are polyphonic (transmit several combinations). Triconsonant signs convey, respectively, three consonants. They are also quite widespread in writing. As a rule, the last two types are used with the addition of monoconsonant signs, which partially or completely reflect their sound.

Ideogrammatic Egyptian hieroglyphs and their meanings

Logograms are symbols that depict what they actually mean. For example, the drawing of the sun is day, and light, and the sun itself, and time.

For a more accurate understanding, the logogram was supplemented with a sound sign. Determinatives are ideograms that are intended to indicate grammatical categories in logographic writing. As a rule, they were placed at the end of words. The determiner served to clarify the meaning of what was written. However, it did not denote any words or sounds. Determinatives can have both figurative and direct meaning. For example, the Egyptian hieroglyph “eye” is not only the organ of vision itself, but also the ability to see and look. And a sign illustrating a papyrus scroll could not only designate a book or the scroll itself, but also have another abstract, abstract concept.

Use of signs

Decorative and sufficient formal character hieroglyphs determined their use. In particular, signs were used, as a rule, to inscribe sacred and monumental texts. IN everyday life, a simpler hieratic system was used to create business and administrative documents and correspondence. But, despite its fairly frequent use, it could not supplant hieroglyphs. They continued to be used during the Persian and Greco-Roman periods. But it must be said that by the 4th century there were few people who could use and understand this system.

Scientific research

Ancient writers were among the first to become interested in hieroglyphs: Diodorus, Strabo, Herodotus. Horapollo had particular authority in the field of studying signs. All these writers strongly argued that all hieroglyphs are picture writing. In this system, in their opinion, individual signs denoted entire words, but not letters or syllables. Researchers of the 19th century were influenced by this thesis for a very long time. Without trying to scientifically confirm this theory, scientists deciphered the hieroglyphs, considering each of them as an element of pictography. The first to suggest the presence of phonetic signs was But he, too, could not find the key to understanding them. Jean-François Champollion managed to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. The historical merit of this researcher is that he abandoned the thesis of ancient writers and chose his own path. As the basis of his study, he accepted the assumption that Egyptian writing consisted not of conceptual, but phonetic elements.

Exploring the Rosetta Stone

This archaeological find was a black polished basalt slab. It was completely covered with inscriptions that were made in two languages. There were three columns on the stove. The first two were made in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The third column was written in Greek, and it was thanks to its presence that the text on the stone was read. This was the priestly address of honor sent to Ptolemy the Fifth Epiphanes on the occasion of his coronation. In the Greek text, the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy were present on the stone. They should also have been in the Egyptian text. It was known that the names of the pharaohs were enclosed in cartouches or oval frames. That is why Champillion had no difficulty finding names in the Egyptian text - they clearly stood out from the background of other characters. Subsequently, comparing the columns with texts, the researcher became increasingly convinced of the validity of the theory about the phonetic basis of symbols.

Some drawing rules

Aesthetic considerations were of particular importance in the writing technique. On their basis, certain rules were created that limited the choice and direction of the text. The symbols could be written from right to left or vice versa, depending on where they were used. Some signs were written so as to face the reader. This rule applied to many hieroglyphs, but the most obvious limitation was when drawing symbols illustrating animals and people. If the inscription was located on the portal, then its individual signs faced the middle of the door. The person entering could thus easily read the characters, since the text began with hieroglyphs located at a distance closest to him. As a result, not a single sign was “ignorant” or turned their back on anyone. The same principle, in fact, can be observed during a conversation between two people.

Conclusions

It should be said that, despite the external simplicity of the elements of writing of the Egyptians, their system of signs was considered quite complex. Over time, symbols began to fade into the background, and soon they were replaced by other ways of graphically expressing speech. The Romans and Greeks did not show much interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs. With the adoption of Christianity, the symbol system completely fell out of use. By 391, by order of the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius the First, all pagan temples were closed. The last hieroglyphic record dates back to the year 394 (this is evidenced by archaeological finds on Philae Island).

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is one of the three Egyptian writing systems known today, which was used in ancient Egypt for more than three thousand years. The Egyptian writing system is believed to be more than five thousand years old. Scientists have been trying for thousands of years to figure out how many hieroglyphs were in Egyptian writing at a certain stage in Egypt's development.

Development of hieroglyphic writing

Initially, writing involved the creation of drawings that clearly demonstrated what the author wanted to express. Gradually, the Egyptians made the transition to semantic writing. It became possible to create entire sentences. Ideograms appeared that made it possible to express the semantic load of abstract concepts. For example, the day was designated by the sign of the sun. And the image of a mountain nearby meant that the sun shines only during the day (in the evening the sun hides behind the mountain). Subsequently, symbols were created that could carry a phonetic (sound) load.

The set of hieroglyphs was formed gradually and at a slow pace. Thus, the priests during the Ancient, Middle and New (1500 BC) kingdoms had at their disposal 800 hieroglyphs in the Egyptian script. Their number reached 6,000 characters only in the Greco-Roman period (300 BC). This is explained by the limited area of ​​​​use of hieroglyphs.

Application and writing

They were written along a horizontal line, mainly from left to right, although there are entries from right to left. Hieroglyphs depicting a person or animal helped to understand where the letter began, since they were always turned to face the beginning of the line. And very rarely, columns were used for writing, which were invariably read from top to bottom. One sign could have superiority over another if it was located on top (that is, it should be read first). But there were no punctuation marks in Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.

They were mainly used to create sacred texts and monumental inscriptions. To work with other documents or for correspondence, hieratic writing was used. It was much simpler, but could not supplant hieroglyphs in Egyptian writing. It is known that it was used even at the beginning of our era, but the people who would have owned this complex system There were practically no signs left that could be read and written at that time.

Classes

It is customary to divide hieroglyphs into classes, but today it is not yet possible to talk about the completion of this process. The famous Egyptologist Englishman Wallis Bud was the first to compile catalogs of ancient Egyptian writing signs at the beginning of the 20th century. His compatriot and also famous Egyptologist Alan Gardiner did the same, just a few years later. Classification was carried out solely according to external characteristics. Over time, Garnier's catalog began to be used, which indicated its popularity among Egyptologists. In the eighties of the twentieth century, a catalog of signs of the Ptolemaic era was published in four volumes, which was created simultaneously by four authors. In the current century, D. Kurt's grammar was released, which corrected the four-volume work and Garnier's work. The main advantage of this work is the new division into groups. Time will tell how well it meets the needs and whether it can catch on.

According to the presentation by D. Kurt (2008), 805 hieroglyphs in Egyptian writing are divided into 26 groups. The most numerous among them should be considered:

1. “Woman and Occupation” - 77 hieroglyphs, group “B”;
2. “Parts of the human body” - 63 hieroglyphs, group “D”;
3. “A man and his activities” - 58 hieroglyphs, group “A”;
4. “Birds” - 54 hieroglyphs, group “G”;
5. “Parts of the body of mammals” - 52 hieroglyphs, group “F”.

In addition, among Egyptian symbols there are two main groups of hieroglyphs: sound (phonograms) and semantic (ideograms) signs. Sound signs (phonograms) are used to indicate sounds and can be of three types:

• monoconsonant signs;
• biconsonant signs;
• triconsonant signs.

Ideograms are used to denote a whole word or concept and are divided into two types: logograms and determiners. Logograms are symbols that directly depict what it represents. And determiners are located at the end of the sentence and, as a rule, do not designate any words or letters. They served to determine the meaning of what was written. The difficulty in deciphering these signs was that they could have not only a concrete, but also an abstract, abstract concept.

Ancient Egypt

What are the names of the mysterious signs covering the walls of Egyptian temples, tombs and sarcophagi?

• The mysterious signs covering the walls of Egyptian temples, tombs and sarcophagi are called hieroglyphs.
• Hieroglyphs are ancient pictorial signs of Egyptian writing.

What symbols did the Egyptians use to represent the words “sun”, “go”, “bread”, “mouth”?

How many hieroglyphs were there in Egyptian writing?

• There are more than seven hundred hieroglyphs in Egyptian writing. Initially they all looked like drawings.

How did the Egyptians move from representing a whole word with an icon to representing an individual sound with an icon?

• The Egyptians turned hieroglyphic words into hieroglyphic letters, from which words were composed.

Did the Egyptians use hieroglyphs to convey vowel sounds?

• Vowel sounds were not expressed in hieroglyphs. This made it very difficult to read.

What was the main difficulty in reading Egyptian hieroglyphs?

• In Egypt, vowel sounds were not expressed in hieroglyphs. This is the difficulty of reading Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Why did the Egyptians use identifiers?

• To make writing easier. One icon could represent a phrase or phrase.

Why did a person who could read and write seem like a real sage to the Egyptians?

• It was difficult to learn to read and write. Therefore, a person who could read and write seemed to the Egyptians to be a sage.

Who and how managed to unravel the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs?

• The first person who managed to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs was the French scientist Jean-Francois Champollion.

• He tried to compile a complete list of hieroglyphs, thus creating the basis for the translation of all other Egyptian hieroglyphic texts.

What was the main carrier of information in Egypt?

• Scroll. Even Egyptian books appear in the form of a rolled-up scroll.

What is the technology for making papyrus?

• The papyrus stem was cut into long narrow strips. Then these strips were laid on a smooth table in a row, one next to the other. Other strips were placed on top, but in the transverse direction. The entire two-layer masonry was pressed with a flat stone, and the reed fibers released sticky juice.

How were papyri stored?

• For storage, papyrus was rolled into a tube to form a scroll.

How did the beginning of a new thought stand out on the papyri? How do we highlight a new paragraph in the text?

• On papyrus, the beginning of a new thought was highlighted in red lettering. And we write from the red line.

Ancient Mesopotamia

What were the recordings made of in Mesopotamia?

• Records in Mesopotamia were made on clay tablets.

What was the name of the Mesopotamian letter consisting of wedge-shaped icons?

• The writing of Mesopotamia consisting of wedge-shaped icons was called cuneiform.

Why was the wedge used as the basis for writing in Mesopotamia, and not something else?

• An impression made with a stick on a clay surface gave a mark like a wedge.

What is the origin of cuneiform icons?

• Stable combinations of pictograms began to form, the meaning of which gradually departed from the sum of the meanings of the pictures. For example, the sign “bird” together with the sign “egg” gave the combination “fertility”

What could the signs corresponding to short monosyllabic words mean?

• Many signs expressing short monosyllabic words were also used to convey sounds or syllables.

How many different characters are there in cuneiform?

• There are several hundred characters in cuneiform.

Was it easy to learn to read and write in Mesopotamia?

• Learning to read and write in Mesopotamia was no less difficult than in Egypt.

Why was the library of King Ashurbanipal not destroyed by fire?

• The books survived because the clay does not burn, but only becomes stronger after firing.

Phoenicia

Why did Phoenician traders need writing?

• Phoenician traders needed to be literate in order to keep their accounts.

Which writing system—Egyptian, Babylonian, or Phoenician—was simpler?

• The most difficult is Babylonian, then Egyptian (this is all cuneiform), Phoenician is the easiest. The Phoenicians wrote in separate letters, similar to Latin ones, but they did not have vowels.

What did each Phoenician letter icon correspond to? What can it be called?

• Each icon in the Phoenician alphabet corresponded to a separate sound and was a letter.

How many letters are there in the Phoenician alphabet?

• There were only twenty-two letters.

What is the main disadvantage of Phoenician writing?

• There were no vowels in the Phoenician alphabet.

Who perfected the Phoenician alphabet? How?

• The Phoenician alphabet was changed by the Greeks. They added vowel sounds there.

What is the origin of the word alphabet?

• From the name of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet - alpha and beta.

India and China

How were records made in ancient India?

• In ancient India they wrote on stone and palm leaves.

What did they write in ancient India?

• They wrote on palm leaves with ink made from soot diluted in sweetened water.

What did the ancient Indian book look like?

• The books were a stack of rectangular sheets.

What are the names of the numbers we use?

What people invented Arabic numerals?

Which writing—Egyptian, Babylonian, or Phoenician—is the writing of China most similar to?

How many characters did a Chinese person need to know if he could read and write?

How should an educated Chinese write?

Describe the technology for making ancient Chinese bamboo books.

What was silk used for besides clothing?

What people invented paper?

What was the paper made from?

Describe paper making technology.

Why did Europe learn about papermaking technology so late?

Ancient Greece

Why did the Greeks stop using writing and forget it? When did this happen?

When did new writing appear in Greece? What alphabet was it based on?

What allowed the Greeks to more accurately convey sound when writing?

How many letters were there in the Greek alphabet?

What did young Greeks write on in school?

What can you tell us about the Library of Alexandria?

How did Ptolemy obtain the manuscripts of Aeschylus and Sophocles from the Athenians?