Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs
A section of the Papyrus of Ani showing cursive hieroglyphs.
Type	Logography usable as an abjad
Languages	Egyptian language
Time period	3500 BCE – 400 CE
Parent systems	(Proto-writing) Egyptian hieroglyphs
Child systems	Hieratic, Demotic, Meroitic, Middle Bronze Age alphabets^{[citation needed]}
ISO 15924	`Egyp, 050`
Direction	Left-to-right
Unicode alias	Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Unicode range	U+13000–U+1342F
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols.Without proper rendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters.

Egyptian hieroglyphs (/ˈhaɪər.ɵɡlɪf/ hyr-o-glif; Egyptian: mdw·w-nṯr, "god's words") were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood. Less formal variations of the script, called hieratic and demotic, are technically not hieroglyphs.

Etymology[edit]

The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικός (hieroglyphikos),^[1] a compound of ἱερός (hierós'sacred')^[2] and γλύφω (glýphō 'Ι carve, engrave'; see glyph),^[3] in turn a calque of Egyptian mdw·w-nṯr (medu-netjer) 'god's words'.^[4] The glyphs themselves were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικὰ γράμματα (tà hieroglyphikà grámmata) 'the sacred engraved letters'. The word hieroglyph has become a noun in English, standing for an individual hieroglyphic character. As used in the previous sentence, the word hieroglyphic is an adjective, but is often erroneously used as a noun in place of hieroglyph.

History and evolution[edit]

Hieroglyphs emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from ca. 4000 BCE resemble hieroglyphic writing. In 1998, a German archaeological team under Günter Dreyer excavating at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa'ab) uncovered tomb U-j of a Predynastic ruler, and recovered three hundred clay labels inscribed with proto-hieroglyphs, dating to the Naqada IIIA period of the 33rd century BCE.^[5] The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa'ab, which dates from the Second Dynasty. In the era of the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, about 800 hieroglyphs existed. By the Greco-Roman period, they numbered more than 5,000.^[6]

Most scholars believe that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably [were], invented under the influence of the latter",^[7] and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia."^[8]^[9] However, given the lack of direct evidence, "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt."^[10] Instead, it is pointed out and held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy” and that “a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt..."^[11] Recent discoveries such as the Abydos glyphs "challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia."^[12]

Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that function like an alphabet; logographs, representing morphemes; and determinatives, which narrow down the meaning of logographic or phonetic words.

Hieroglyphs on an Egyptian funerary stela

As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic(priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stonecontains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek.

Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE), and after Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Macedonian and Roman periods. It appears that the misleading quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part, as a response to the changed political situation. Some believe that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true Egyptians' from some of the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally. Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge.

By the 4th century, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the myth of allegorical hieroglyphs was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in 391 CE by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I; the last known inscription is from Philae, known as The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, from 394 CE.^[13]

Decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing[edit]

Main article: Decipherment of hieroglyphic writing

As active knowledge of the hieroglyphs and the related scripts disappeared, numerous attempts were made to decipher the hidden meaning of the ubiquitous inscriptions. The best known examples from Antiquity are the Hieroglyphica (dating to about the 5th century) by Horapollo, which offers an explanation of almost 200 glyphs. Horapollo seems to have had access to some genuine knowledge about the hieroglyphs as some words are identified correctly, although the explanations given are invariably wrong (the goose character used to write the word for 'son', zꜣ, for example, is identified correctly, but explained wrongly to have been chosen because the goose loves his offspring the most while the real reason seems to have been purely phonetic). The Hieroglyphica thus represent the start of more than a millennium of (mis)interpreting the hieroglyphs as symbolic rather than phonetic writing.

In the 9th and 10th century CE, Arab historians Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya offered their interpretation of the hieroglyphs. In his 1806 English translation of Ibn Wahshiyya's work,^[14] Joseph Hammer points out that Athanasius Kircher used this along with several other Arabic works in his 17th century attempts at decipherment.

Kircher's interpretation of the hieroglyphs is probably the best known early modern European attempt at 'decipherment', not least for the fantastic nature of his claims. Another early attempt at translation was made by Johannes Goropius Becanus in the 16th century.

Like other interpretations before it, Kircher's 'translations' were hampered by the fundamental notion that hieroglyphs recorded ideas and not the sounds of the language. As no bilingual texts were available, any such symbolic 'translation' could be proposed without the possibility of verification. Kircher further developed the notion that the last stage of Egyptian could be related to the earlier Egyptian stages.^{[citation needed]}

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum

The real breakthrough in decipherment began with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's troops in 1799 (during Napoleon's Egyptian invasion). As the stone presented a hieroglyphic and a demotic version of the same text in parallel with a Greek translation, plenty of material for falsifiable studies in translation was suddenly available. In the early 19th century, scholars such as Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Åkerblad, andThomas Young studied the inscriptions on the stone, and were able to make some headway. Finally, Jean-François Champollion made the complete decipherment by the 1820s:

It is a complex system, writing figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once, in the same text, the same phrase, I would almost say in the same word.^[15]

Hieroglyphs survive today in two forms: directly, through half a dozen Demotic glyphs added to the Greek alphabet when writing Coptic; and indirectly, as the inspiration for the original alphabet that was ancestral to nearly every other alphabet ever used, including the Roman alphabet.

Writing system[edit]

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbolsinstead of Unicode characters.

Visually hieroglyphs are all more or less figurative: they represent real or illusional elements, sometimes stylized and simplified, but all generally perfectly recognizable in form. However, the same sign can, according to context, be interpreted in diverse ways: as a phonogram (phonetic reading), as a logogram, or as an ideogram (semagram; "determinative") (semantic reading). The determinative was not read as a phonetic constituent, but facilitated understanding by differentiating the word from its homophones.

Phonetic reading[edit]

Hieroglyphs typical of the Graeco-Roman period

Most non-determinative hieroglyphic signs are phonetic in nature, meaning the sign is read independent of its visual characteristics (according to the rebus principle where, for example, the picture of an eye could stand for the English wordseye and I [the first person pronoun]). This picture of an eye is called a phonogram of word, 'I'.

Phonograms formed with one consonant are called uniliteral signs; with two consonants, biliteral signs; with three triliteralsigns.

Twenty-four uniliteral signs make up the so-called hieroglyphic alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing does not normally indicate vowels, unlike cuneiform, and for that reason has been labelled by some an abjad alphabet, i.e., an alphabet without vowels.

Thus, hieroglyphic writing representing a pintail duck is read in Egyptian as sꜣ, derived from the main consonants of the Egyptian word for this duck: 's', 'ꜣ' and 't'. (Note that ꜣ (

, two half-rings opening to the left), sometimes substituted with the digit '3', is the Egyptian alef).

It is also possible to use the hieroglyph of the Pintail Duck without a link to its meaning in order to represent the twophonemes s and ꜣ, independently of any vowels which could accompany these consonants, and in this way write the word: sꜣ, "son," or when complemented by the context other signs detailed further in the text, sꜣ, "keep, watch"; and sꜣṯ.w, "hard ground". For example:

– the characters sꜣ;

– the same character used only in order to signify, according to the context, "pintail duck" or, with the appropriate determinative, "son", two words having the same or similar consonants; the meaning of the little vertical stroke will be explained further on:

– the character sꜣ as used in the word sꜣw, "keep, watch"^{[clarification needed]}

As in the Arabic script, not all vowels were written in Egyptian hieroglyphs; it is debatable whether vowels were written at all. Possibly, as with Arabic, the semivowels /w/ and /j/(as in English W and Y) could double as the vowels /u/ and /i/. In modern transcriptions, an e is added between consonants to aid in their pronunciation. For example, nfr"good" is typically written nefer. This does not reflect Egyptian vowels, which are obscure, but is merely a modern convention. Likewise, the ꜣ and ʾ are commonly transliterated as a, as in Ra.

Hieroglyphs are written from right to left, from left to right, or from top to bottom, the usual direction being from right to left^[16] (although for convenience modern texts are often normalized into left-to-right order). The reader must consider the direction in which the asymmetrical hieroglyphs are turned in order to determine the proper reading order. For example, when human and animal hieroglyphs face to the left (i.e., they look left), they must be read from left to right, and vice versa, the idea being that the hieroglyphs face the beginning of the line.

As in many ancient writing systems, words are not separated by blanks or by punctuation marks. However, certain hieroglyphs appear particularly common only at the end of words making it possible to readily distinguish words.

Uniliteral signs[edit]

Main article: Transliteration of Ancient Egyptian § Uniliteral signs

The Egyptian hieroglyphic script contained 24 uniliterals (symbols that stood for single consonants, much like letters in English). It would have been possible to write all Egyptian words in the manner of these signs, but the Egyptians never did so and never simplified their complex writing into a true alphabet.^[17]

Each uniliteral glyph once had a unique reading, but several of these fell together as Old Egyptian developed into Middle Egyptian. For example, the folded-cloth glyph seems to have been originally an /s/ and the door-bolt glyph a /θ/ sound, but these both came to be pronounced /s/, as the /θ/ sound was lost. A few uniliterals first appear in Middle Egyptian texts.

Besides the uniliteral glyphs, there are also the biliteral and triliteral signs, to represent a specific sequence of two or three consonants, consonants and vowels, and a few as vowel combinations only, in the language.

Phonetic complements[edit]

Egyptian writing is often redundant: in fact, it happens very frequently that a word might follow several characters writing the same sounds, in order to guide the reader. For example, the word nfr, "beautiful, good, perfect", was written with a unique triliteral which was read as nfr :

However, it is considerably more common to add, to that triliteral, the uniliterals for f and r. The word can thus be written as nfr+f+r but one reads it merely as nfr. The two alphabetic characters are adding clarity to the spelling of the preceding triliteral hieroglyph.

Redundant characters accompanying biliteral or triliteral signs are called phonetic complements (or complementaries). They can be placed in front of the sign (rarely), after the sign (as a general rule), or even framing it (appearing both before and after). Ancient Egyptian scribes consistently avoided leaving large areas of blank space in their writing, and might add additional phonetic complements or sometimes even invert the order of signs if this would result in a more aesthetically pleasing appearance (good scribes attended to the artistic, and even religious, aspects of the hieroglyphs, and would not simply view them as a communication tool). Various examples of the use of phonetic complements can be seen below:

– md +d +w (the complementary d is placed after the sign) → it reads mdw, meaning "tongue".

– ḫ +p +ḫpr +r +j (the 4 complementaries frame the triliteral sign of the scarab beetle) → it reads ḫpr.j, meaning the name "Khepri", with the final glyph being the determinative for 'ruler or god'.

Notably, phonetic complements were also used to allow the reader to differentiate between signs which are homophones, or which do not always have a unique reading. For example, the symbol of "the seat" (or chair):

– This can be read st, ws and ḥtm, according to the word in which it is found. The presence of phonetic complements—and of the suitable determinative—allows the reader to know which reading to choose, of the 3 readings:

1st Reading: st –

– st, written st+t ; the last character is the determinative of "the house" or that which is found there, meaning "seat, throne, place";

– st (written st+t ; the "egg" determinative is used for female personal names in some periods), meaning "Isis";

2nd Reading: ws –

– wsjr (written ws+jr, with, as a phonetic complement, "the eye", which is read jr, following the determinative of "god"), meaning "Osiris";

3rd Reading: ḥtm –

– ḥtm.t (written ḥ+ḥtm+m+t, with the determinative of "Anubis" or "the jackal"), meaning a kind of wild animal,

– ḥtm (written ḥ +ḥtm +t, with the determinative of the flying bird), meaning "to disappear".

Finally, it sometimes happens that the pronunciation of words might be changed because of their connection to Ancient Egyptian: in this case, it is not rare for writing to adopt a compromise in notation, the two readings being indicated jointly. For example, the adjective bnj, "sweet" became bnr. In Middle Egyptian, one can write:

– bnrj (written b+n+r+i, with determinative)

which is fully read as bnr, the j not being pronounced but retained in order to keep a written connection with the ancient word (in the same fashion as the English languagewords through, knife, or victuals, which are no longer pronounced the way they are written.)

Semantic reading[edit]

Besides a phonetic interpretation, characters can also be read for their meaning: in this instance logograms are being spoken (or ideograms) and semagrams (the latter are also called determinative).^[18]

Logograms[edit]

A hieroglyph used as a logogram defines the object of which it is an image. Logograms are therefore the most frequently used common nouns; they are always accompanied by a mute vertical stroke indicating their status as a logogram (the usage of a vertical stroke is further explained below); in theory, all hieroglyphs would have the ability to be used as logograms. Logograms can be accompanied by phonetic complements. Here are some examples:

– rꜥ, meaning "sun";

– pr, meaning "house";

– swt (sw+t), meaning "reed";

– ḏw, meaning "mountain".

In some cases, the semantic connection is indirect (metonymic or metaphoric):

– nṯr, meaning "god"; the character in fact represents a temple flag (standard);

– bꜣ, meaning "Bâ" (soul); the character is the traditional representation of a "bâ" (a bird with a human head);

– dšr, meaning "flamingo"; the corresponding phonogram means "red" and the bird is associated by metonymy with this color.

Those are just a few examples from the nearly 5000 hieroglyphic symbols.

Determinatives[edit]

Determinatives or semagrams (semantic symbols specifying meaning) are placed at the end of a word. These mute characters serve to clarify what the word is about, ashomophonic glyphs are common. If a similar procedure existed in English, words with the same spelling would be followed by an indicator which would not be read but which would fine-tune the meaning: "retort [chemistry]" and retort [rhetoric]" would thus be distinguished.

A number of determinatives exist: divinities, humans, parts of the human body, animals, plants, etc. Certain determinatives possess a literal and a figurative meaning. For example, a roll of papyrus,

is used to define "books" but also abstract ideas. The determinative of the plural is a shortcut to signal three occurrences of the word, that is to say, its plural (since the Egyptian language had a dual, sometimes indicated by two strokes). This special character is explained below.

Here are several examples of the use of determinatives borrowed from the book, Je lis les hiéroglyphes ("I am reading hieroglyphics") by Jean Capart, which illustrate their importance:

– nfrw (w and the three strokes are the marks of the plural: [literally] "the beautiful young people", that is to say, the young military recruits. The word has ayoung-person determinative symbol:

– which is the determinative indicating babies and children;

– nfr.t (.t is here the suffix which forms the feminine): meaning "the nubile young woman", with

as the determinative indicating a woman;

– nfrw (the tripling of the character serving to express the plural, flexional ending w) : meaning "foundations (of a house)", with the house as a determinative,

;

– nfr : meaning "clothing" with

as the determinative for lengths of cloth;

– nfr : meaning "wine" or "beer"; with a jug

as the determinative.

All these words have a meliorative connotation: "good, beautiful, perfect". The Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian by Raymond A. Faulkner, gives some twenty words which are read nfr or which are formed from this word.

Additional signs[edit]

Cartouche[edit]

Rarely, the names of gods are placed within a cartouche; the two last names of the sitting king are always placed within a cartouche:

jmn-rꜥ, "Amon-Ra" ;

qljwꜣpdrꜣ.t, "Cleopatra" ;

Filling stroke[edit]

A filling stroke is a character indicating the end of a quadrat which would otherwise be incomplete.

Signs joined together[edit]

Some signs are the contraction of several others. These signs have, however, a function and existence of their own: for example, a forearm where the hand holds a scepter is used as a determinative for words meaning "to direct, to drive" and their derivatives.

Doubling[edit]

The doubling of a sign indicates its dual; the tripling of a sign indicates its plural.

Grammatical signs[edit]

The vertical stroke, indicating the sign is a logogram;
The two strokes of the "dual" and the three strokes of the "plural";
The direct notation of flexional endings, for example:

Spelling[edit]

Standard orthography—"correct" spelling—in Egyptian is much looser than in modern languages. In fact, one or several variants exist for almost every word. One finds:

Redundancies;
Omission of graphemes, which are ignored whether or not they are intentional;
Substitutions of one grapheme for another, such that it is impossible to distinguish a "mistake" from an "alternate spelling";
Errors of omission in the drawing of signs, which are much more problematic when the writing is cursive (hieratic) writing, but especially demotic, where the schematization of the signs is extreme.

However, many of these apparent spelling errors constitute an issue of chronology. Spelling and standards have varied over time, so the writing of a word during the Old Kingdom might be considerably different during the New Kingdom. Furthermore, the Egyptians were perfectly content to include older orthography ("historical spelling") alongside newer practices, as though it were acceptable in English to use archaic spellings in modern texts. Most often, ancient "spelling errors" are simply misinterpretations of context. Today, hieroglyphicists use numerous cataloguing systems (notably the Manuel de Codage and Gardiner's Sign List) to clarify the presence of determinatives, ideograms, and other ambiguous signs in transliteration.

Simple examples[edit]

nomen or birth name

Ptolemy
in hieroglyphs

The glyphs in this cartouche are transliterated as:

p
t

"ua"

l
m

y (ii) s

Ptolmys

though ii is considered a single letter and transliterated y.

Another way in which hieroglyphs work is illustrated by the two Egyptian words pronounced pr (usually vocalised as per). One word is 'house', and its hieroglyphic representation is straightforward:

Here the 'house' hieroglyph works as a logogram: it represents the word with a single sign. The vertical stroke below the hieroglyph is a common way of indicating that a glyph is working as a logogram.

Another word pr is the verb 'to go out, leave'. When this word is written, the 'house' hieroglyph is used as a phonetic symbol:

Here the 'house' glyph stands for the consonants pr. The 'mouth' glyph below it is a phonetic complement: it is read as r, reinforcing the phonetic reading of pr. The third hieroglyph is a determinative: it is an ideogram for verbs of motion that gives the reader an idea of the meaning of the word.

In the field of Egyptology, transliteration is the process of converting (or mapping) texts written in the Egyptian language to alphabetic symbols representing uniliteralhieroglyphs or their hieratic and Demotic counterparts. This process facilitates the publication of texts where the inclusion of photographs or drawings of an actual Egyptian document is impractical.

It should be emphasised that transliteration is not the same as transcription. Transcription seeks to reproduce the pronunciation of a text. For example, the name of the founder of the Twenty-second dynasty is transliterated as ššnq but transcribed Shoshenq in English, Chéchanq in French, Sjesjonk in Dutch, and Scheschonq in German.

Due to the exact details regarding the phonetics of ancient Egyptian not being completely known, most transcriptions depend on Coptic for reconstruction or are theoretical in nature. Egyptologists, therefore, rely on transliteration in scientific publications.

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Standards[edit]

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbolsinstead of Unicode characters.

As important as transliteration is to the field of Egyptology, there is no one standard scheme in use for hieroglyphic and hieratic texts. Some might even argue that there are as many systems of transliteration as there are Egyptologists. However, there are a few closely related systems that can be regarded as conventional. Many non-German-speaking Egyptologists use the system described in Gardiner 1954, whereas many German-speaking scholars tend to opt for that used in the Wörterbuch der aegyptischen Sprache (Erman and Grapow 1926–1953), the standard dictionary of the ancient Egyptian language. However, there is a growing trend, even among English-speaking scholars, to adopt a modified version of the method used in the Wörterbuch (e.g., Allen 2000).

Although these conventional approaches to transliteration have been followed since most of the second half of the nineteenth century to the present day, there have been some attempts to adopt a modified system that seeks to utilise the International Phonetic Alphabet to a certain degree. The most successful of these is that developed by Wolfgang Schenkel (1990), and it is being used fairly widely in Germany and other German-speaking countries. More recent is a proposal by Thomas Schneider (2003) that is even closer to the IPA, but its usage is not presently common. The major criticism levelled against both of these systems is that they give an impression of being much more scientifically accurate with regard to the pronunciation of Egyptian. Unfortunately this perceived accuracy is debatable. Moreover, the systems reflect only the theoretical pronunciation of Middle Egyptian and not the older and later phases of the language, which are themselves to be transliterated with the same system.

Electronic transliteration[edit]

In 1984 a standard, ASCII-based transliteration system was proposed by an international group of Egyptologists at the first Table ronde informatique et égyptologie and published in 1988 (see Buurman, Grimal, et al., 1988). This has come to be known as the Manuel de Codage (or MdC) system, based on the title of the publication, Inventaire des signes hiéroglyphiques en vue de leur saisie informatique: Manuel de codage des textes hiéroglyphiques en vue de leur saisie sur ordinateur. It is widely used in e-mail discussion lists and internet forums catering to professional Egyptologists and the interested public.

Although the Manuel de codage system allows for simple "alphabetic" transliterations, it also specifies a complex method for electronically encoding complete ancient Egyptian texts, indicating features such as the placement, orientation, and even size of individual hieroglyphs. This system is used (though frequently with modifications) by various software packages developed for typesetting hieroglyphic texts (such as SignWriter, WinGlyph, MacScribe, InScribe, Glyphotext, WikiHiero, and others).

Unicode[edit]

With the introduction of the Latin Extended Additional block to Unicode version 1.1 (1992) and the addition of Egyptological alef and ayin to Unicode version 5.1 (2008), it is possible to fully transliterate Egyptian texts using a Unicode typeface. The following table only lists the special characters used in various transliteration schemes (see below).

Transcription characters in Unicode
Minuscule	ꜣ ()	ʾ ()	ı͗ ()	i̯	ï	ꜥ ()	u̯	ḥ	ḫ	ẖ	h̭
Unicode	U+A723	U+02BE	U+0131 U+0357	U+0069 U+032F	U+00EF	U+A725	U+0075 U+032F	U+1E25	U+1E2B	U+1E96	U+0068 U+032D
Majuscule	Ꜣ		I͗	I̯	Ï	Ꜥ	U̯	Ḥ	Ḫ	H̱	H̭
Unicode	U+A722		U+0049 U+0357	U+0049 U+032F	U+00CF	U+A724	U+0055 U+032F	U+1E24	U+1E2A	U+0048 U+0331	U+0048 U+032D
Minuscule	ś	š	ḳ	č	ṯ	ṭ	ṱ	č̣	ḏ
Unicode	U+015B	U+0161	U+1E33	U+010D	U+1E6F	U+1E6D	U+1E71	U+010D U+0323	U+1E0F
Majuscule	Ś	Š	Ḳ	Č	Ṯ	Ṭ	Ṱ	Č̣	Ḏ
Unicode	U+015A	U+0160	U+1E32	U+010C	U+1E6E	U+1E6C	U+1E70	U+010C U+0323	U+1E0E
Brackets/ interpunction	⸗	⟨	⟩	⌈	⌉
Unicode	U+2E17	U+27E8	U+27E9	U+2308	U+2309

Egyptological alef, ayin, and yod[edit]

Three additional characters are required for transliterating Egyptian:

Alef (, two Semitistic alephs, one set over the other (Lepsius); approximated by the digit ⟨3⟩ in ASCII);^[1]
Ayin (, a Semitistic ayin);
Yod (, i with a Semitistic aleph instead of the dot, both yod and alef being considered possible sound values in the 19th century).^[2]

Although six Egyptological and Ugariticist letters were proposed in August 2000,^[3] it was not until 2008 (Unicode 5.1) that four of the six letters were encoded:

Designation	Capital	Lowercase
Egyptological alef	Ꜣ U+A722	ꜣ U+A723
Egyptological ayin	Ꜥ U+A724	ꜥ U+A725

Another two proposals were made regarding the Egyptological yod,^[4]^[5] the eventual result of which was to accept the use of the Cyrillic psili pneumata (U+0486 ◌҆ ) as one of several possible diacritics for this purpose. The other options use the superscript comma (U+0313) and the right half ring above (U+0357). OpenType tables in fonts will be necessary to support the combination correctly.

Examples showing the Cyrillic option and the reverse sicilicus option are given below:

Egyptological yod workarounds
Designation	Capital	Lowercase
Cyrillic psili pneumata	I҆ U+0049 U+0486	i҆ U+0069 U+0486
Right half ring above	I͗ U+0049 U+0357	ı͗ U+0069 U+0357

The Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale adopted its own Unicode-based transliteration system. It uses the Middle English yogh ⟨ȝ⟩ (Unicode U+021D) for alef (hamza), ⟨j⟩ or Vietnamese ⟨ỉ⟩ (Unicode U+1EC9, i with hook above) for Egyptological yod, and a reverse sicilicus ⟨ʿ⟩ (Unicode U+02BF) for ayin.

Demotic[edit]

As the latest stage of pre-Coptic Egyptian, Demotic texts have long been transliterated using the same system(s) used for hieroglyphic and hieratic texts. However in 1980,Demotists adopted a single, uniform, international standard based on the traditional system used for hieroglyphic, but with the addition of some extra symbols for vowels (whichare frequently indicated in Demotic^{[citation needed]}) and other letters that were written in the Demotic script. The Demotic Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (or CDD) utilises this method. As this system is likely only of interest to specialists, for details see the references below.

de Cenival, Françoise. 1980. "Unification des méthodes de translittération." Enchoria: Zeitschrift für Demotistik und Koptologie 10:2–4.
Johnson, Janet H. 1980. "CDDP Transliteration System." Enchoria 10:5–6.
Johnson, Janet H. 1991. Thus Wrote 'Onchsheshonqy: An Introductory Grammar of Demotic. 2nd ed. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 45. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tait, William John. 1982. "The Transliteration of Demotic." Enchoria 11:67–76.
Thissen, Heinz-Josef. 1980. "Zur Transkription demotischer Texte." Enchoria 10:7–9.

Table of conventional transliteration schemes[edit]

This article contains special characters.Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

Erman & Grapow 1926–1953

Gardiner 1957

Buurman, Grimal, et al. 1988

Schenkel 1991

Hannig 1995

Allen 2000

Hoch 1997

Schneider 2003

traditional English pronunciation

𓄿

ꜣ (

, 3)

ꜣ

/ɑː/

𓇋

ı͗/j

ı͗

/ɑː, iː/

𓇌

ı͗j

/j, iː/

𓂝

ꜥ (ˤ)

ꜥ

/ɑː/

𓅱

/w, uː/

𓃀

/b/

𓊪

/p/

𓆑

/f/

𓅓

/m/

𓈖

/n/

𓂋

/r/

𓉔

/h/

𓎛

ḥ

/h/

𓐍

ḫ

/x/

𓄡

ẖ

/x/

𓊃

z, s

/s/

𓋴

/s/

𓈙

/ʃ/

𓈎

ḳ

/k/

𓎡

/k/

𓎼

/ɡ/

𓏏

/t/

𓍿

ṯ

/tʃ/

𓂧

ṭ

ḍ

/d/

𓆓

ḏ

č̣

ḏ

c̣

/dʒ/

The vowel /ɛ/ is conventionally inserted between consonants to make Egyptian words pronounceable in English.

Samples of various transliteration schemes[edit]

The following text (rendered using WikiHiero) is transliterated below in some of the more common schemes.

[Unicode: 𓇓𓏏𓊵𓏙𓊩𓁹𓏃𓋀𓅂𓊹𓉻𓎟𓍋𓈋𓃀𓊖𓏤𓄋𓈐𓎟𓇾𓈅𓏤𓂦𓈉 ]

(This text is conventionally translated into English as "an offering that the king gives; and Osiris, Foremost of Westerners [i.e., the Dead], the Great God, Lord of Abydos; andWepwawet, Lord of the Sacred Land [i.e., the Necropolis]." It can also be translated "a royal offering of Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, the Great God, Lord of Abydos; and of Wepwawet, Lord of the Sacred Land" [Allen 2000:§24.10].)

Erman and Grapow 1926–1953

ḥtp-dỉ-nśwt wśỉr ḫntỉj ỉmntjw nṯr ꜥꜣ nb ꜣbḏw wp-wꜣwt nb tꜣ ḏśr

Gardiner 1953

ḥtp-dỉ-nswt wsỉr ḫnty ỉmntỉw nṯr ꜥꜣ nb ꜣbḏw wp-wꜣwt nb tꜣ ḏsr

Buurman, Grimal, et al. 1988

Htp-di-nswt wsir xnty imntiw nTr aA nb AbDw wp-wAwt nb tA Dsr

A fully encoded, machine-readable version of the same text is:

M23-X1:R4-X8-Q2:D4-W17-R14-G4-R8-O29:V30-U23-N26-D58-O49:Z1-F13:N31-V30:N16:N21*Z1-D45:N25

Schenkel 1991

ḥtp-dỉ-nswt wsỉr ḫnty ỉmntjw nčr ꜥꜣ nb ꜣbč̣w wp-wꜣwt nb tꜣ č̣sr

Allen 2000

ḥtp-dj-nswt wsjr ḫnty jmntjw nṯr ꜥꜣ nb ꜣbḏw wp-wꜣwt nb tꜣ ḏsr

Schneider 2003

ḥtp-ḍỉ-nśwt wśỉr ḫnty ỉmntjw ncr ɗɹ nb ɹbc̣w wp-wɹwt nb tɹ c̣śr

Uniliteral signs[edit]

The Egyptian hieroglyphic script contained 24 uniliterals (symbols that stood for single consonants, much like English letters) which today we associate with the 26 glyphs listed below. (Note that the glyph associated with w/u also has a hieratic abbreviation.)

The traditional transliteration system shown on the left of the chart below is over a century old and is the one most commonly seen in texts. It includes several symbols such as alef (ꜣ) for sounds that were of unknown value at the time. Much progress has been made since, though there is still debate as to the details. For instance, it is now thought the alef (ꜣ) may have been an alveolar lateral approximant [l] in Old Egyptian but was lost by Middle Egyptian. The consonants transcribed as voiced (d, g, ḏ) may actually have been ejective or, less likely, pharyngealized like the Arabic emphatic consonants. A good description can be found in Allen.^[6]

Uniliteral signs

Sign

Traditional transliteration

Phonetic values per Allen (2000)

Say

Notes

Old Egyptian

Middle Egyptian

𓄿

Egyptian vulture

ꜣ (3)

called alef or hamza,
a glottal stop