Ancient
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
The
Rosetta Stone
The
Rosetta Stone is our key to understanding the
meaning of hieroglyphs.
The
Rosetta Stone was a black basalt slab with the
same piece of writing carved in three different
languages: Hieroglyphics (top), Demotic (middle)
and Greek (bottom).
Scholars
were able to make sense of the hieroglyphic
version by comparing it with the Greek which
they already understood
The
Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799, during
the French Revolutionary Wars, by one of Napoleon's
officers near the town of Rosetta (now called
Rashid) . In 1801, it was captured by the British
and, since 1802, has been on show in the British
Museum.
In
1822, a French Egyptologist called Jean Francois
Champollion (1790-1832) was the first person
to translate all the hieroglyphs on the stone.
He discovered that it was a piece of writing
in praise of the good works of the pharaoh Ptolemy
V and that it was carved in 196 BC.
Thanks to his work, we now have a knowledge
of the language of the Ancient Egyptians and
an appreciation of this great civilisation through
the many hieroglyphic writings that have survived.
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The
A to Z of Hieroglyphs
Click
on one of the hieroglyphs above for more information
Our
simplified Hieroglyphic Alphabet is designed for fun to let you
translate English words into Hieroglyphs.
Before
you translate your words into hieroglyphs, break them down into their
basic sounds of their syllables. For example, the word hieroglyph itself
has ten letters but only eight sounds: h-i-r-o-g-l-y-f. Therefore, you
would only need eight hieroglyphs to represent it.
Treat
all double letters as single sounds. That should help you cut back
on the number of hieroglyphs you need to use.
Sometimes
the same hieroglyph is used to represent different letters. If that happens,
change the colour of the hieroglyphs to avoid confusion.
Arrange your hieroglyphs to create interesting designs rather than the
straight lines that we use to arrange our letters and sentences. |
