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How was the mystery of Hieroglyphics unlocked?Steve Theodore:
It was a complex challenge that took centuries to overcome. The Hieroglyphic system involved multiple layers of encoding, including at least four distinct types:
- Alphabetic: Certain symbols stand for a single sound, much like letters in modern Latin alphabets.
- Syllabic: Some symbols represent entire syllables, not just a single letter (in fact, a few represent two syllables).
- Ideographic: Certain symbols convey a complete concept or idea.
- Determinative: To clarify meanings, some symbols guide how other symbols should be read; they do not represent words or sounds themselves.
Compounding the issue was the spread of misinformation. Descriptions from the Greek and Roman periods regarding the hieroglyphic system often focused heavily on the symbolic and "philosophical" interpretations of the signs. Some of these were accurate, but many were outright nonsense. This led later scholars to mistakenly assume the entire language was purely symbolic. For instance, some Renaissance thinkers believed it to be a non-verbal, purely symbolic language that could be read without reference to any spoken language. This, however, was far from the truth and led to many erroneous readings.
This Renaissance interpretation is nothing more than speculation, based on a symbolic reading of the signs.
Fortunately, several efforts over time were grounded in the accurate hypothesis that the language used in the inscriptions was essentially what we now refer to as Coptic. This meant that by linking the symbols to sounds, the language wouldn’t need to be recreated. In contrast, deciphering other scripts representing extinct languages is far more challenging and nearly hopeless.
The major breakthrough came in 1799 with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. This artifact contains a trilingual inscription of the same proclamation (a rather mundane temple dedication) in two distinct Egyptian scripts and in ancient Greek. It allowed researchers to begin definitively assigning known sounds to some of the hieroglyphs. Multilingual texts like this are crucial for deciphering lost languages, just as the discovery of another trilingual inscription at Behistun in Iran helped unlock the cuneiform script in the 1830s.
The real key to the puzzle was the fact that Egyptian scribes enclosed royal names within a unique symbol—a lozenge-shaped figure known as a cartouche, which represented the ring of a Pharaoh. When the Rosetta Stone’s inscriptions reached Europe, French linguist Jean-François Champollion correctly deduced that these cartouches signified royal names, allowing him to begin matching the sounds to the symbols. He identified the name of Greek King Ptolemy (Ptolemaios) in the Greek section and correlated it with symbols found in the cartouches. A mixed Greek-Egyptian text also mentioned Ptolemy’s queen, Cleopatra.
Because these names shared some common components, he was able to definitively recognize a few of the symbols. Here’s a breakdown of how it happened (explained in greater detail here):
To begin with, he separated the names in the cartouches into segments:
turned into
and
transformed into
As you can observe, there are a few symbols. So, if number 4 in the first set is number 2 in the second, that’s the “L” in Ptolemaios and Kleopatra. Following this reasoning, #1 in the first set corresponds to #5 in the second, which is the “P.”
By making these comparisons, Champollion was able to identify the values for P, T, O, and L, which are commonly found. He hypothesized that number 7 in the first image must represent “S”, and he also knew the vowels from Greek. This provided him with nearly a complete set of values.
However, Champollion noticed that there were additional symbols in “Kleopatra,” which should have nine letters, yet there were 11 symbols. He assumed—incorrectly—that numbers 10 and 11 represented the ideogram for “goddess,” a part of Cleopatra’s title. In reality, number 10 was a gender marker denoting a female name, but this discovery helped reveal the role of determinatives and other non-alphabetic signs.
In truth, Champollion was fortunate: Not all Egyptian signs align perfectly with individual alphabetic letters. Yet, with these two small pieces of evidence, he could deduce several letter sounds and the combined use of alphabetic and ideographic signs. Armed with knowledge of Coptic and the Greek text, he expanded this understanding, identifying more and more symbols and their corresponding sounds.
It’s crucial to remember that this was an extensive project involving many people. While Champollion deserves the most credit, he didn’t decode the entire system by himself. Other scholars, like Johan David Åkerblad and Thomas Young, had already made key discoveries about the nature and structure of the Rosetta text around the same time. For example, Young discovered the word “king” in the hieroglyphs by noting its frequent occurrence in the Greek text, even though he didn’t yet know its phonetic value. There were many challenges along the way, and Champollion’s fiery temperament didn’t always win him friends, even among his admirers.
Over the next century or so, many scholars advanced the understanding of the system, leading to a solid grasp of written hieroglyphics and its derivatives, Hieratic and Demotic. Although it remains an intricate system with room for debate and confusion (with over 700 commonly used symbols), we now have a fairly comprehensive understanding. Ancient Egyptian civilization endured for over 3000 years; even in Egypt’s conservative society, that’s ample time for changes in style and form. As such, we still can’t casually read Egyptian texts without effort.
Nonetheless, the fact that we’ve managed to recover this language stands as a testament to human ingenuity. It’s also worth noting that this achievement was nearly entirely a volunteer effort, spanning multiple countries and languages. Citizen science at its finest.
A great starting point for those interested is Egyptian Hieroglyphs for Complete Beginners by Bill Manley. While it’s not a grammar guide or a primer on Egyptian literature, it offers valuable insight into how to identify the basic structure and intent of hieroglyphic texts.
This post originally appeared on Quora. Click here to view.
