Hieroglyphs

After the fall of ancient Egyptian civilization in 30 bc, the meaning of hieroglyphs remained a mystery for about 1,800 years. Then, during the French occupation of Egypt from 1798 to 1801, a group of French soldiers and engineers uncovered a large stone now known as the Rosetta Stone. This stone bore an ancient inscription containing the same text written three different ways—in hieroglyphs, in the demotic script, and in ancient Greek. The stone was taken to Europe, where scholars translated the ancient Greek and used the information to decipher the other two texts.

French Egyptologist Jean François Champollion was the first modern person who was able to read hieroglyphs. It had been noted that certain groups of hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone were surrounded by a carved oblong loop. The loop, called a cartouche, separated the names of kings and queens from large bodies of text. Champollion knew enough of hieroglyphs to confirm that the cartouches on the Rosetta Stone contained the name of one of the Greek rulers of Egypt, Ptolemy V. As Champollion examined more cartouches, he observed that some of the glyphs matched between Ptolemy’s cartouche and the other cartouches. Champollion determined that certain glyphs in the cartouches phonetically spelled out the names of certain Greek rulers of Egypt. Using this knowledge and an ingenious reading of ideograms in other cartouches, he deciphered the names of the native rulers Ramses and Thutmose.

Champollion’s discovery showed him definitively that there were two categories of glyphs, phonograms and ideograms. Champollion then began to use this information to decipher the large body of Egyptian hieroglyphs on objects that had been taken to Europe. In 1828 he led a group of artists and architects to Egypt with the goal of drawing pictures of tombs, temples, and monuments and copying down as many hieroglyphic inscriptions as possible. He later translated the hieroglyphs from the drawings. The work of deciphering the hieroglyphs went on after Champollion’s death and continues up to the present day, continually providing new information about life in ancient Egypt.

People in several other ancient cultures, such as ancient China and Mesopotamia, used hieroglyphs much like the Egyptians did. Over a long period, however, the characters used in these systems became so stylized or simplified that the original pictorial symbols were no longer apparent. These scripts are no longer considered hieroglyphic.

The best-known hieroglyphs outside of Egypt that retained their pictorial elements are those of the Maya and Olmec, who inhabited areas in present-day Central and North America. Although totally unrelated to Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya and Olmec hieroglyphs bear certain similarities, such as the use of a combination of sound and object glyphs.

The Maya were especially concerned with exactly recording time using astronomical observations. Many Maya glyphs were part of a calendar that recorded specific days, weeks, and years, as well as the genealogies of important families. Scribes carved hieroglyphs on stone slabs, altars, and wooden beams and painted them on ceramic vessels and in books made of bark paper. One characteristic that distinguishes Maya glyphs is their compact, blocklike form. While Egyptian hieroglyphs were written in long, unpunctuated lines of individual glyphs without spaces or punctuation, Maya ones appear in rectangles or blocks. Most Maya hieroglyphs survive as carvings on stone structures.