The Writing Revolution

by Amalia E Gnanadesikan

  The written consequence of this property of Egyptian was that both *nafir and * nafrat and many another word built on the same core (such as the name of Queen Nefertiti) were spelled with the symbol, representing the consonant sequence n-f-r. Thus Egyptian developed a repertoire of about 70 signs (some of which are shown in figure 3.1) which represented many of the commonly used triconsonantal word cores.

  Some word roots in Egyptian had only two consonants, and they were accordingly given signs that represented only two consonants. It was at this point that the Egyptians applied the rebus principle. They applied it to these biconsonantal cores and developed a purely phonological use for the biconsonantal signs. A biconsonantal sign like pr, could be used logographically to mean “house” (if written with a stroke after it) or simply to mean the two consonants p and r. Thus the spelling of prt, “winter”, began with . There were about 80 common biconsonantal signs.

  Figure 3.1 Some of the biconsonantal signs, triconsonantal signs, and determinatives used in Egyptian hieroglyphs. For the phonetic values of the transcriptions, see figure 3.2. The signs could face either rightward or leftward, depending on the direction in which they were intended to be read. Rightward-facing was the ordinary direction, but leftward-facing texts were made in the interests of artistic harmony. Hieroglyphs embedded within the text of this book therefore face leftward, while those in this chart face rightward.

  Once the signs were used for their consonantal value alone, the principle could be extended yet further, and the Egyptians also developed a series of 25 signs which stood for individual consonants, the so-called “hieroglyphic alphabet” (shown in figure 3.2). The values of some of these signs may have been derived from the first consonant in the word for the object depicted: the horned viper, , fy, stood for the consonant f.

  Except in foreign names, the Egyptians did not generally use the uniconsonantal signs as a true alphabet with which to spell out whole words phoneme by phoneme, although the insight that phonemes could be represented with individual signs later served as the inspiration for the ancestor of our own alphabet (see chapter 9). Rather, the Egyptian uniconsonantal signs had two specific purposes. The first was to serve as phonetic complements. Putting a uniconsonantal sign after a biconsonantal sign, such as , r, after , emphasized that the word was being spelled phonologically rather than logographically – as the consonants pr, rather than the word meaning “house.” Phonetic complements emphasized phonological readings; they did not add new sounds to the word. Thus adding the to did not add another r sound.

  Uniconsonantal signs could also be added as phonetic complements to triconsonantal signs. When they followed triconsonantal signs, however, they did not mean the sign was being used purely phonologically. Unlike biconsonantal signs, triconsonantal signs generally remained associated with a particular core morpheme, resisting rebus applications. Thus similar-sounding words that did not share the same core meaning would tend not to use the same triconsonantal sign.

  Supporting bi- and triconsonantal signs with uniconsonantal phonetic complements makes reading hieroglyphs much easier, as there are continual reminders of what the last one or two consonants in a sign are. Thus n-f-r could be written the latter two cases containing built-in reminders of how was to be read. Using uniconsonantal signs to complement biconsonantal or triconsonantal signs was the norm rather than the exception; but whether they were used, and how many of them were used, could vary according to the space that was available.

  Figure 3.2 Egyptian uniconsonantal signs, the so-called hieroglyphic alphabet, in rightward-facing orientation. The order is modern convention; the ancient order is not fully known.

  The other important use of uniconsonantal signs was to spell out affixes. Thus the feminine *nafrat was spelled (nfr-(r)-t), showing the feminine suffix -t, .

  The structure of the Egyptian language thus led the inventors of hieroglyphs down a different path than the Sumerians. Unlike the Akkadians, the Egyptians were laboring under no allegiance to the Sumerian system. When they applied the rebus principle, separating sound from meaning, the signs took on the values of consonants, rather than syllables. And thus the Egyptian writing system became the first to represent individual phonemes (often unpronounceable by themselves) as opposed to syllables, which are the natural pronounceable unit of speech. The mixed system of logograms and consonant symbols that resulted is described as logoconsonantal, as opposed to cuneiform’s logosyllabic nature.

  Besides the logograms, the tri- and biconsonantal morphological cores, and the purely phonological uses of bi- and uniconsonantal signs, there remains an extensive series of determinatives – unpronounced signs that served to give some information about a word’s meaning. The determinative(s) came last in the spelling of a word, after the phonetic complements, so they were handy for indicating the ends of words in a time before the invention of word spacing. They would also have suggested to the reader which one of a family of words was to be read from the consonantal core, and they would have disambiguated homonyms.

  Some determinatives were quite broad in their application, giving the general class of object or idea that was being referred to. For example, a scroll, , was used with words that dealt with writing, books, or abstract concepts. A sparrow was used with things that were considered small, weak, or evil; it is thus known to modern Egyptologists as the “little bird of evil.” Other determinatives were very specific. The sign was used with the names of pyramids and towns located near pyramids. The introduction of the horse during Egypt’s New Kingdom brought the introduction of a horse determinative: . Occasionally the use of a determinative would add non-linguistic information. For example, the word for “mother” would normally be written with a “woman” determinative, but if a divine mother was being referred to, the determinative would be that for a goddess, showing a distinction in writing that was not reflected in the pronunciation of the word (as we might write “the Mother” if referring to a goddess).

  Thus far there has been no mention of vowels. The vowels of an Egyptian word varied according to what form of the word was being used and were therefore predictable on the basis of the conjugation of the word. So a word’s vowels could generally be inferred from context or from the determinative that followed the word. A person who spoke Egyptian could easily supply the correct vowels. The problem for modern Egyptologists, however, is that there is no longer any very clear evidence for what those vowels were. Some evidence can be garnered from the spelling of Egyptian names in other ancient languages, such as Greek and Akkadian. But foreigners’ ideas of how names are pronounced tend to be unreliable, so even this minimal evidence must be taken with a grain of salt.

  Other evidence comes from Coptic, the liturgical language of Egyptian Christians and a direct descendant of ancient Egyptian. Although Coptic died out as a native spoken language around the end of the seventeenth century ad, it is still used in church liturgy and, most importantly, it is written with vowels. This evidence is valuable to historical linguists but is still somewhat unreliable, as vowels are notoriously changeable aspects of language. (In English, for example, the pronunciations of all the long vowels have changed since AD 1400, and the pronunciation of vowels varies considerably from one region to another.)

  Therefore, while the ancient Egyptian language can nowadays be read quite easily by Egyptologists, pronouncing it is another matter. By convention an [ε] vowel (as in the English word met) is usually pronounced between consonants. Thus the feminine form n-f-r-t is nowadays usually pronounced [nεfrεt] or [nεfεrt] (as in Nefertiti), rather than the more historically probable *nafrat. Exceptions to the default [ε] are made for the so-called “weak consonants” y([j]), and w, which are pronounced [A], [i], and [u] respectively. So k, “spirit,” is today pronounced [ka], rhyming with English ma; yb, “heart,” is pronounced [ib], rhyming with grebe, and nwt, the sky goddess, is pronounced [nut], rhyming with loot. The , y, and w consonants belong to a class known as glides or semivowels, and are notorious for
flip-flopping between more vowel-like and more consonantal pronunciations in various languages. Reading them as vowels is thus not unreasonable. The Egyptians themselves would often omit glides in writing, probably considering them part of the previous or following vowel. (Try pronouncing “three ears” and “three years,” and you will see how easily a [j], spelled “y,” can be lost among the vowels.)

  In all, hieroglyphic writing used about 500 common signs at any given time. Some signs were lost or added with time; some occurred relatively rarely. The classic hieroglyphic texts draw from a repertoire of about 700 signs. In Roman times, however, when the use of hieroglyphs had become the exclusive knowledge of the priesthood, there was a final flowering of hieroglyph invention, which put the total number of attested Egyptian hieroglyphs up over 6,000.

  In writing hieroglyphic texts Egyptian scribes were ever conscious of the aesthetic effect of their labors. The individual signs were not simply arranged one after the other in rows or columns. While texts did in general progress along a row or down a column, the individual signs were grouped so as to make a series of square or rectangular boxlike clusters. Large signs would form a box of their own, while small signs were grouped together as their shape permitted. Signs within a box were read from top to bottom and then either right to left or left to right depending on the orientation of the text in general. Variant spellings (with more or less phonetic complementation, for example) could be used to fit texts to the space assigned to them.

  The direction of writing could vary. The default direction for hieroglyphic writing was either from top to bottom in columns, with the columns progressing from right to left, or from right to left in rows written from top to bottom. In some cases, however, columns or rows of hieroglyphs could be written from left to right. This option was called upon in the interests of symmetry, for example for two columns of writing flanking an illustration. Both columns would thus face the picture. The particular direction a text is to be read in can almost always be determined by the direction which the humans and animals in the text are facing. Hieroglyphs are read so that you encounter the faces or fronts of things first. When interspersed with modern texts, hieroglyphs are usually presented in the less typical direction, left to right; this is after all consistent with the traditional Egyptian principle of harmonious arrangement in context.

  The Egyptians never lost sight of the pictorial value of their written signs. Unlike in Mesopotamia, where writing was reduced to practical wedges that ran willy-nilly across any attending artwork, writing in Egypt was never fully separated from art. When illustrations and writing occurred together, they were knit into a harmonious whole, and it is not always evident where the art leaves off and the writing begins. For example, illustrations of the judgment of souls show the heart of the deceased being weighed against a feather. But the feather is a hieroglyph for the goddess Maat, who personified justice and right living. Is the heart then being weighed against a literal feather, or against the ideal of justice and right living?

  The illustrations accompanying a text also affected the order of writing. Whichever way the images of people were facing, that would be the direction in which the hieroglyphs labeling the image (i.e. the caption) would be facing. Thus the large illustrating picture and the little pictures that made up the text of the caption would all be facing the same direction. Similarly, inscriptions on the left and right sides of a statue would be written in two different directions, so that the beings composing each inscription faced the same way the statue itself was facing.

  In fact, illustrations and statues influenced writing even more deeply. Normally the name of a person (or god) would be followed by a determinative, showing whether the name was that of a man, woman, child, god, or goddess. But when the name occurred in the label of an illustration or statue of that person, the determinative was generally left off. Why include a sign which is essentially the picture of a goddess, if the object being labeled is a bigger picture of a goddess? Thus a portrait of a person could play the written role of a determinative.

  A well-executed text in hieroglyphs was indeed a work of art, and to the Egyptian mind art and hieroglyphs served much the same function. Specifically, they both preserved the essence of a person for eternity. Many of the most extensive surviving hieroglyphic texts are related to the Egyptian cult of the dead. Egyptian culture displayed a constant preoccupation with eternity and the afterlife, particularly on behalf of the pharaohs. The Old Kingdom (2650 to 2150 BC) saw the building of the pyramids, which were intended to be eternal earthly dwelling places of the pharaoh’s spirit – a particularly effective spirit embodying divine kingship. It was clear to the Egyptians that being deprived of food and drink would cause a person’s spirit to depart from their body; thus clearly the spirit (k-, usually spelled ka in English) needed to be sustained with food and drink. Cults were established to continue serving the deceased pharaohs in perpetuity, and great pyramids were built to house and commemorate them. The pyramids of Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura at Giza were built during the fourth dynasty, from 2575 to 2465 BC. But after a couple of centuries – and a change in dynasty – the pharaohs must have noticed (and perhaps even encouraged) the fact that the temple cults of these long-dead kings were petering out. People and institutions, they realized, were ephemeral, while the need for sustenance in the afterlife was eternal.

  To solve this problem, the pharaohs turned to the written word, inscribing their burial chambers with hieroglyphs that described the offering of food and drink to the king. They also wrote incantations to ensure the overcoming of all obstacles in the afterlife, and to point the king’s soul (b, now usually spelled ba) to the heavens. Words were considered to have magical efficacy, and writing, they realized, could effect this magic permanently on their behalf. And they were right: the cults of the pharaohs are long gone, but many of these Old Kingdom funerary inscriptions, known as Pyramid Texts, still survive.

  In the Middle Kingdom (c.2040–1780 BC), the use of funerary texts spread downward to the nobility, and the texts were often painted on the coffins of the deceased. These Coffin Texts were considered to be extremely powerful: the words were intended to be eternally alive. In fact, the words were composed of pictures, often of living things. But if those words were alive, might it not be dangerous to put them so close to the body of the deceased, home of a living spirit? Indeed. The most dangerous animal, the horned viper (, representing f), began to appear cut in two, and by the end of the Middle Kingdom potentially dangerous animals were often shown dismembered or mutilated in Coffin Texts.

  The New Kingdom (1550–1070 BC) saw a further evolution of funerary texts into a genre collectively known as the Book of the Dead. These texts were written on papyrus in cursive hieroglyphs and buried with the dead (plate 2).

  Hieroglyphic texts were strongly conservative in their language, perpetuating not only the spirits of the dead but also their language. The earliest connected texts in hieroglyphs are written in a form of the language known as Old Egyptian, spoken from about 2600 to 2100 BC. This was the language of the Pyramid Texts. The classical phase of the language followed, known as Middle Egyptian. As far as we can tell, Middle Egyptian was spoken from about 2100 to 1600 BC. Yet the permanence of the written word (especially in carefully executed hieroglyphs) had by then so impressed the Egyptians that Middle Egyptian remained the language of hieroglyphic texts from then on. Just as Akkadian-speaking scribes continued to learn Sumerian after it was otherwise dead, Egyptian scribes continued to read and write in a form of their language that was no longer spoken.

  This is one of the stranger consequences of the invention of writing. Originally meant to preserve information, it ended up preserving language, with the result that people could (and still do today) read and write in languages that have been dead for centuries. In a preliterate society the idea of using an extinct language would have been bizarre. Who would you speak it with? How would you learn it? A literate society, however, preserves messages from the dead.
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  The preserving nature of writing was put to good use by the Egyptians in their quest for the eternal, and it both expressed and fueled their quest. On the one hand it allowed them a look into their own past, giving them the opportunity of perpetuating traditions and language that were already ancient; on the other hand they used it to preserve for the everlasting future their culture and even their own spirits.

  Although many literary and scholarly Egyptian texts do survive, the majority of surviving ancient Egyptian texts are funerary in nature. This is partly due to the priorities of the Egyptians, who placed great emphasis on ensuring a blessed afterlife for their kings and, by extension, themselves. Much effort was expended in this endeavor, as attested by the Great Pyramid of Khufu, whose base covers 13 acres. The production of a great quantity of written material for the same eternal purpose is not surprising.

  Another significant reason for the preponderance of funerary texts is that everyday texts were used in everyday locations, while funerary texts were placed in holy preserves at the edge of the bone-dry desert, well away from the damp of the irrigated land. The sere environment has allowed the funerary texts to stand the test of time, just as they were intended to. By contrast, papyri dealing with national administration, for example, have generally not survived. Yet those that do tell a rather different story.

  The requirements of administrative record keeping and those of eternal commemoration are quite different; not all uses of writing are inherently artistic or spiritual. As Egyptian civilization emerged it also needed writing for more prosaic purposes – for running its bureaucracy and storing everyday information. Writing put to these purposes had to be quick and easy, and so cursive hieroglyphs began to be written with less pictorial accuracy and more ligatures between signs. This process soon led to the development of hieratic, a script that was used in the everyday affairs of the nation. Hieratic worked on the same principles as hieroglyphic, being simply a more efficient way of writing the same signs, but the pictorial nature of most of the signs was obscured, while certain frequently occurring sequences of two hieroglyphs were merged into one connected sign. The relationship between hieratic and hieroglyphic was thus not unlike that between modern cursive handwriting and type, though somewhat less obvious. Hieratic was written from right to left in rows or in columns.