Discovering Writing: Learning Egyptian Hieroglyphs - Lesson 2 (Part I)

Learning Egyptian Hieroglyphs - Lesson 2 (Part I)

by Caroline Seawright

Ideograms (Sense Signs)

Ideograms convey their meaning pictorially, usually accompanied by phonograms. A picture of the sun suggests sun, light and time, and as phonograms are used to give the exact meaning of words, can be seen in words such as:

(or ) r' means "sun"
hrw means "day", "daytime"
rk means "time", "period"
wbn means "rise", "shine"

But, in writing, ideograms need not be accompanied by all of the signs needed to express its complete sound value. Full writings are rare, but they show the sound values where the shortened forms don't. For example:

sdjm (full version) and sdjm both mean "hear".

Note that ideograms do not have to end the word.

Determinatives

When ideograms end the word, they are called determinatives. This is because these ideograms determine the meaning of the foregoing sound signs. They also define the meaning in a general way.

Note that words written as ideograms can also have determinatives:

ssh, "scribe"

Only very common words do no have determinatives. Also, some words have more than one determinative!

Generic Determinatives

Ideograms that serve to determine a huge number of different words can only express the kind of sense of these words, rather than their specific meaning. These are known as generic determinatives.

Here is a list of the more important generic determinatives:

1The king was often thought of as the incarnation of the falcon god Horus, and the queen as the cobra goddess Edjo. This is how the falcon and the cobra became determinatives for both royalty and deities.

2Note the difference of the arms from the determinative for man.

3This animal represents the god Set (identified by the Greeks with Thyphon), the brother and murderer of Osiris, enemy of his nephew Horus (son of Osiris).

4The hieroglyphs spelling the royal name are written inside this shape.

Purely Ideographic Writings

When ideograms stand for the actual objects that they depict, the phonetic signs that would indicate the sounds of these objects are often not used. These ideograms are usually indicated by the use of the stroke determinative .

If the noun is feminine, the stroke is preceded by t, the feminine ending.

Masculine and Feminine

The Egyptian language distinguishes things into two genders - masculine and feminine. Most feminine nouns end in t. Most of the other nouns are masculine.

Masculine:

r', sun

Feminine:

nywt, town

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