HIEROGLYPHICS

(Yunanca köken — orijinale bakınız.) Sculpture-writing or picture-writing; i.e. the expre ion of a series of ideas by representations of visible objects. The name is more peculiarly applied to a species of writing in use among the ancient Egyptians. According to the system of Cham poll i on, the hieroglyphical writing of the Egyptians consists of three different species of characters: — 1. The hieroglyphic, properly so called, in which the representation of the object conveys the idea of the object itself; either entire, or in an abridged form. Many words were thus expre ed, chiefly those denoting common visible objects. These are termed by Cham poll i on figurative, and divided into figurative proper, figurative conventional, and figurative abridged. 2. The second cla of hieroglyphical characters consists of those which represent ideas by images of visible objects, used as symbols; and these are generally employed in the expre ion of abstract ideas or complex modes: as, a tumult, represented by a man throwing arrows; adoration, by a censer containing incense, . In some of these the connection between the type and antitype is obvious; in others, it depends on a ociations which are not understood by us, and consequently cannot be traced. These characters are what the Greeks more peculiarly termed hieroglyphics: they are called by Cham poll i on si/?nbolical. 3. The third cla consists of phonetic characters, in which the sign represents not an object but a sound. This, according to Cham poll i on, was effected by the following device. The figure representing a letter was the likene of some animal or other object of which the name began with that letter. Thus Cham poll i on has constructed an alphabet of initials, in which the letter A is represented by an eagle, the initial letter of the Egyptian word " eagle " (Ahorn) being A; and so forth. T.wentynine elementary sounds were thus represented. But the writer was not confined to the use of one representative of a letter only. At first sight it would appear that all objects, the initial of whose name was a particular letter, might be used to expre that letter; but custom seems to have applied only a certain number of objects to this use: some letters have eighteen or nineteen known representatives, others six or seven. In selecting out of these, the writer seems to have been guided by notions of what was suitable in reference to the word which he was writing; as, for example, the Sin the word Si, son, is commonly represented by the figure of a goose, on account, according to Horus Apollo, of the supposed attachment of that bird for its young. The honour of the recent progre made in the explanation of hieroglyphical writing is divided between the English orientalist Dr. Young, and the French man Cham poll i on; but the latter appears to have had no small share in the original discoveries, as well as to have carried the science to a high degree of cultivation. Besides the hieroglyphic character, the Egyptians used the hieratic and dcTnotic, which were, both of them, conversions of the hieroglyphic into a kind of current hand: the latter nearly alphabetical. The most civilized people of America, the Mexicans, at the time of the Spanish conquest, had advanced as far as the discovery of hieroglyphical or picture writing, although they did not po e a written alphabet. The Chinese writing was, originally, wholly ideographic; i.e. expre ing ideas by symbols (answering to the second cla of Egyptian hieroglyphics, with some admixture of the first). But in proce of time the greater part of the characters have become simply phonetic. (See Dr. Young's " Egypt" in the Enc. Brit., and his " Account of Recent Discoveries," 1823; the works of Cham poll i on; Jablonski, Pantheon Mgyptiacum; Quart. Review, vols, xliii. liii.; Edinb.Rev., vol. xlv.; Salt's E ays J SeySaxth, Rudiment a Hieroglyph ices, 1825.) [s. 569]