Select Page

Ancient Egypt Writing.Paper and Ink, The Gift to the world

Ancient Egypt Writing

When you look at the higher grades the student was permitted to use paper. One of many components of Egyptian trade, and something of this permanent gifts to the planet is Ancient Egypt writing in writing.

The stem for the papyrus plant was cut into strips, other strips were placed crosswise upon these, the sheet was pressed, and paper, the very stuff (and nonsense) of civilization, was made.

How well they managed to get could be judged from the known proven fact that manuscripts published resume help by them five thousand years back will always be intact and legible.

Sheets were combined into books by gumming the best edge of one sheet to the left side of the that is next this way rolls were produced that have been sometimes forty yards in total; these people were seldom longer, for there were no verbose historians in Egypt.

Ink, black and indestructible, was made by mixing water with soot and vegetable gums on a wooden palette; the pen was a simple reed, fashioned in the tip into a brush that is tiny.

With your modern instruments the Egyptians wrote the essential ancient of literatures

The egyptians wrote the most ancient of literatures with these modern instruments.

Their language had probably can be bought in from Asia; the oldest specimens of it show semitic that is many.

The earliest writing was apparently pictographic and object was represented by drawing a picture of it: e.g. the word for house (Egyptian per) was indicated by a tiny rectangle with an opening using one for the long sides.

As a few ideas were too abstract to be literally pictured, pictography passed into ideography: certain pictures were by custom and convention used to represent not the objects pictured but the ideas suggested by them; so the forepart of a lion meant supremacy (as with the Sphinx), a wasp meant royalty, and a tadpole stood for thousands.

As a development that is further this line, abstract ideas, which had to start with resisted representation, were indicated by picturing objects whose names happened to resemble the spoken words that corresponded to the ideas; so that the picture of a lute came to mean not only lute, but good, because the Egyptian word-sound for lute—nefer— resembled the word-sound for good—nofer.

Queer rebus combinations grew away from these homonyms words of like sound but different meanings.

The scribe, being puzzled to find a picture for so intangible a conception, split the word into parts, kho-pi-ru, expressed these by picturing in succession a sieve (called in the spoken language khau), a mat (pi), and a mouth (ru); use and wont, which sanctify so many absurdities, soon made this strange assortment of characters suggest the idea of being since the verb to be was expressed in the spoken language by the sound khopiru.

The Egyptian arrived at the syllable in this way

The Ancient Egypt writting arrived at the syllable, the syllabic sign, and the syllabary i.e., a collection of syllabic signs; and by dividing difficult words into syllables, finding homonyms for these, and drawing in combina¬tion the objects suggested by these syllabic sounds, he was able, in the course of time, to make the hieroglyphic signs convey almost any idea in this way.

Just one step remained to invent letters in ancient Egypt writing.

The sign for a homely house meant to start with the term for house per; then it meant the sound per, or p-r with any vowel in the middle, as a syllable in virtually any word.

Then the picture was shortened, and used to represent the sound po, pa, pu, pe or pi in virtually any word; and because vowels were never written, this is comparable to having a character for P. By a development that is like sign for a hand (Egyptian dot) came to mean do, da, etc., finally D; the sign for mouth (ro or ru) came to mean jR; the sign for snake (zt) became Z; the sign for lake (shy) became Sh. . . .

The effect was an alphabet of twenty-four consonants, which passed with Egyptian and Phoenician trade to all quarters associated with the Mediterranean, and came down, via Greece and Rome, as one of the most precious areas of our Oriental heritage.

In Ancient Egypt writing, Hieroglyphics are as old as the initial dynasties; alphabetic characters appear first in inscriptions left by the Egyptians into the mines associated with the Sinai’peninsula, variously dated at 2500 and 1500 B.c.

The Egyptians never adopted a writing that is completely alphabetic

Whether wisely or not, the Ancient Egypt writing never adopted a completely alphabetic writing; like modern stenographers they mingled pictographs, ideographs and syllabic signs making use of their letters towards the very end of the civilization.

This has caused it to be hard for scholars to read through Egyptian, but it is quite conceivable that such a medley of longhand and shorthand facilitated the business of writing for the people Egyptians who could spare the time to master it.

Since English speech isn’t any honorable guide to English spelling, it really is probably as hard for a contemporary lad to understand the devious ways of English orthography since it was for the Egyptian scribe to memorize by utilize the five hundred hieroglyphs, their secondary syllabic meanings, and their tertiary alphabetic uses.

In the course of time a far more rapid and sketchy as a type of ancient Egypt writing was developed for manuscripts, as distinguished from the careful “sacred carvings” of this monuments.

Since this corruption of hieroglyphic was initially created by the priests together with temple scribes, it was called by the Greeks hieratic; however it soon passed into common use for public, commercial and private documents.

A still more abbreviated and form that is careless of script was created by the common people, and so had become known as demotic.

Regarding the monuments, however, the Egyptian insisted on having his lordly and lovely hieroglyphic egypt that is perhaps ancient was the most picturesque form of writing ever made.