The Land of Pharaohs

The ancient Egyptian was concerned with recording everything by writing, from the smallest event to the greatest one, his way of living, his problems, ideas, and some literary texts. Yet the religious. Texts, which were widespread in tombs, were the most perfect thing that we found. That’s why the Egyptian cared very much for writing and worked on developing it to suit his needs and circumstances.

The origin of writing like its counterpart in primitive nations started as pictures, like signs. Egyptians kept using pictures for a long time, in contrast with the other nations which developed their writings to symbols until the Sumerian culture (a culture raised south Iraq) guided the Egyptians to the basis of writing by symbols from which Heretic writing developed, while there was a difference between it and the Sumerian. Hieratic writing (priestly writing) was used for religious purposes while the secular purposes were written in hieroglyphic which depends on pictures. Hieratic developed till it lost any similarity to its origins.

This writing developed to a faster one and more difficult to be read and it was called Demotic writing (secular purposes) and it was used until the Christian era. The Egyptians abandoned the Demotic but we do not know why? Is it for its complex lines or is it for another reason? They wrote the Egyptian language with Greek letters then the Hieroglyphic to represent the sounds that are not found in Greek. It was called Coptic and it was used until the 17^th century and is still used until now in Coptic church rituals.

Hieroglyphic was written from right to left or vice-versa sometimes or up-and-down. As for Hieratic and Demotic they were always written from right to left.

Writing Instruments:

At the very beginning, ancient Egyptians wrote on stones, and after that they started to use papyrus which was abundant in Egypt in lakes and swamps but it is not found now in the Nile starting from North of Khartoum.

1. The long papyrus stems were cut into shorter parts of 30 cm and peeled.
2. The core was cut longitudinally into thin slices and arranged side by side.
3. Another layer of these slices was added perpendicularly.
4. The two layers were pressed together till they were joined. They did not use any adhesive substances except the natural juice resulting from pressing which contains farina.

The ancient Egyptian used other instruments for writing such as limestone plates, broken pots and also wooden slats after covering them with lime. These instruments were used for temporary purposes such as school exercises, drafts, daily uses, workers’ attendance record, and some other purposes. They also used leather and in the late era they used ivory, clay, linen and even bronze for recording. The dimensions of the writer’s stone slat were: 20 – 43 cm long, 5 – 8 cm wide and 5 – 10 thick.

At one of the slat’s borders there were two or more depressions for colours. The colour was put in a depression, the black in another one, and any other colour in the third. The colours were dry and disk-like. The black colour came from carbon and the red was brought from the Red cave area. The disk was prepared by mixing the dye with a diluted resin solution, so the ink congeals and to re-melt the ink a brush was dipped in water and passed over the disk (like water-colours). The brush was made from reed stems of 15-25 cm long; its end was cut with an inclination. Then the tip was smashed by separating the fibers and sometimes the reed pencils were used like a feather by splitting the tip from the middle instead of smashing it.

Solving the hieroglyphic symbols:

After history had drawn the curtains on the ancient Egyptian culture and the world forgot the hieroglyphic language and all that concerns its writing and reading, the greatest discovery in Egyptology occurred in the year 1799. While digging the foundations to strengthen Smith’s castle at Julian’s British citadel one of the British soldiers called “Boshar” found a stone, which is called now Rosetta Stone. When this stone was presented to the professionals in Britain they realized its importance, and found a hieroglyphic text and its Greek legible translation.

They also found the same text written in Demotic. Thus, the stone contained two languages, the Greek language and the Egyptian language in two different handwritings. For twenty years after the arrival of the stone in Britain, the researchers worked on trying to solve the symbols. The first success happened in the year 1820, one of the Swedish diplomats called “Thomas Aerpal” was able to recognize some names like Ptolemy by comparing the Greek text and the Demotic text and other words also were recognized.

“Thomas Young” came after and proved that the Hieroglyphic signs and symbols written in an oval frame were kings' names, but he misread the phonetic properties of these symbols.

No remarkable success had been achieved until the French scientist Champleon (1790-1832) appeared. He had a great effect in understanding the method of reading and writing the Hieroglyphic language. What qualified him to do so was his perfection in Coptic language. He translated the Greek text into Coptic and succeeded in reaching some rules in carving the Hieroglyphic. Then he searched for what he translated in the Hieroglyphic text in the suitable contexts to find the great difficulty because the Hieroglyphic text was written as usual without spaces between the words. After solving many of the symbols he used the counter way to translate from Hieroglyphic to Coptic what he was able to distinguish in order to understand its meaning. This way had difficulties because the Hieroglyphic words that entered the Coptic language were relatively very few and also because the Coptic words developed that their origins could not be known. Then he used speculation and reached the meanings of the words from their repetition in more than a context, he also referred to the Hebrew language which preserved a lot of the common words in the Semitic languages and this was how many of the meanings in the ancient Egyptian language were revealed.

Reaching this point, we’ve finished the language and literature section. We hope we’ve covered the topic conveniently.