Visible Language: The First Centuries of Writing in Egypt

Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-092-3 Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-093-0 (ePub) A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

2023

Signs of Life, 2024

In recent decades, the Ancient Egyptian realm of pictorial script and meta-textuality has been the focus of many research projects. Foremost among them is the innovative and ground-breaking sub-field that was helmed by Prof. Orly Goldwasser, exploring the study of classifiers and the ways in which Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs mirror the Ancient Egyptian mind. Taking Goldwasser’s pioneering work as its inspiration, this volume draws together contributions from some of the leading voices in Egyptology and neighbouring fields to illuminate different aspects of the use of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, their semiotic value, and of the language that they record, as well as looking more broadly at the use of signs, pictorial systems, script, learning processes, and classifications. Together, these chapters offer a unique and multi-layered picture of the ways in which Ancient Egyptian language and Hieroglyphs emerged within Ancient Egyptian culture, and the means by which they interacted with other script systems and languages.

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2009

J. Baines, J. Bennet, S. Houston (Hg.), The Disappearance of Writing Systems, London, 157–181, 2008

For the study of the end of Egyptian writing systems demotic is of special relevance because Egyptian texts continued to be notated in demotic long after other Egyptian scripts were abandoned. Demotic underwent dramatic changes from being originally an everyday script to one that became perfectly acceptable for religious texts. However, the case of hieroglyphic and its demise is also revealing and should be compared to the end of demotic. After summarizing the models that Egyptologists have proposed for interpreting the disappearance of Egyptian scripts and culture, the ups and downs of Egyptian writing competence throughout Egyptian history is sketched. Do the available sources and data allow us to draw definite conclusions? The impact of increasing complexity in hieroglyphic temple inscriptions in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods is discussed in the wider context of the development of intellectual trends in that epoch. It is argued that demotic seemingly followed the same trajectory to its demise as hieroglyphic when it applied so-called un-etymological or phonetic writings, which turned demotic into a script of restricted knowledge. However, all must remain hypothetical because of the high number of yet unpublished demotic texts.

Spaces and Meaning: Multimodal Communication in Ancient Egypt, 2025

The wall paintings and reliefs that constitute the decorative programs of Ancient Egyptian temples and elite tomb chapels unite both pictorial elements as well as writing (mostly hieroglyphic signs). Their creators made use of this co-presence of the two modes by combining them in meaningful ways in order to create and shape messages. This contribution presents some communicative (as well as aesthetical) uses of the medium image-text-composition in Ancient Egypt. A particular focus lies on the visual functions of writing, i.e., the effects it has on the perception of image-(text-)spaces by ancient (and modern) beholders, and on the distinction between ‘represented writing’ and ‘writing per se’. The contribution is concluded by a closer look at four applications of these effects that can be found in the decorative programs of elite tomb chapels from the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1080 BC).

The conference is hosted by the Institute of Archaeology (UCL) and the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (UC Berkeley). With special thanks to the conference team: Rachel Barnas (University of California, Berkeley), Beatrice De Faveri (University of California, Berkeley), Walid Elsayed (Sohag University), Maysa Kassem (Fayum University), Jason Silvestri (University of California, Berkeley). The conference will be live-streamed on Thursday18, Friday 19 and Saturday 20, November 2021

A.M. Jasink, J. Weingarten en S. Ferrara ed., Non-scribal Communication Media in the Bronze Age Aegean and Surrounding Areas. The semantics of a-literate and proto-literate media (seals, potmarks, mason’s marks, seal-impressed pottery, ideograms and logograms, and related systems) (Periploi 9), 2017

Writing – of any type – is a highly complex system of visual communication, but it is by no means the only such system in societies that make use of it. It is always accompanied by other graphic codes, some of which present striking resemblances to writing. The interchange between these codes (including the exchange of systemic features and of graphic morphology) is fascinating. Examples of such interchange can be seen in Ancient Egyptian marking systems as related to hieroglyphic and cursive writing.

2023

Contribution to St. Polis (ed.), Guide to the Writing Systems of Ancient Egypt, IFAO 2023 GIFAO 2, on the interaction between hieroglyphic writing and ancient Egyptian art