More from George Hart on hieroglyphs
Why a tadpole means a great deal
Times Online
No prizes to those of you who have studied hieroglyphs at even the most basic level for guessing that this title refers to ancient Egyptian numbering! George Hart is taking a look at the subject in this short article:
Recording numbers and quantities was one of the first requirements of the bureaucracy as soon as hieroglyphs had been invented. Items to be accounted for varied from enemies slain in battle and prisoners to how many jars of beer or bunches of onions were needed to accompany the Pharaoh into the afterlife. Inventories of equipment used in temples were kept meticulously and any damage noted down.
The system of writing numbers was logical but cumbersome and took up a lot of space. A vertical or horizontal stroke indicated numbers 1 to 9, a hobble for cattle 10 to 90, a coil of rope 100 to 900 and a lotus 1,000 to 9,000. For higher numerals 10,000 was represented by a finger raised for counting and 100,000 by a tadpole – of which myriads would emerge in the pools left by the Nile’s annual flood.
See the above page for the full story.
Dead cats and absent camels
Times Online
More from from George Hart looking at the depiction of animals in Egyptian hieroglyphs and art.
Any look at hieroglyphs and art in tombs and temples reveals a wealth of information about animals living in the Nile, on the river banks, in the deserts and in the skies. Some creatures were extremely dangerous and had to be hunted or kept at bay by magical spells.
A famous gilded statuette from the Tomb of Tutankhamun represents the Pharaoh on a canoe throwing his spear at a hippopotamus – though the hippo is not shown in case it came to life and wrecked the king’s treasures. Sometimes hieroglyphs showing vipers were deliberately mutilated by being cut in half so that the snake could not bite the tomb-owner in the afterlife.
Non-Phonetic signs
Times Online
An integral element of hieroglyphs was the use of signs which in themselves have no phonetic value. Their purpose was to convey the sense of a word by an image, vividly enhancing inscriptions with a whole new repertoire of pictures. Egyptologists call these signs “determinatives” and they are written after the hieroglyphs which have sound values. We have to admire the ingenuity of the scribes in inventing these signs.
Some determinatives, of course, are obvious, such as in the word meaning to “bow down”, where the picture of a man performing a gesture of deference leaves us in no doubt of the sense.
Similarly, the last sign in the word meaning a “chariot”, could not be clearer in conveying the meaning of the phonetic hieroglyphs. But how can you draw a picture of an “hour”?
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