بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
رموز وكتابات الفراعنة
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Egyptian Hieroglyphic AlphabetThis is the
Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet, with transliterations which are used by
Egyptologists, and the approximate sounds in English. These signs are
essentially all consonants (even the ah's and ee's). The vowels were not
written (see below), and are normally just said as "eh" (rarely "o", in some
words), nowadays.
Egyptian signs were of two types, phonetic signs, like these (along with
many signs which were combinations of two or three sounds), and determinatives,
signs which gave a clue to the meaning of the word. Most words were made up of
phonetic signs, followed by one determinative. A few had two or three
determinatives. Some very common words had no determinative. And, some other
common words were written as just the determinative, with no phonetic signs.
And there are common abbreviations, in which one or two signs stand for an
entire word or phrase.
In this table, the alternative signs in parentheses were mainly used in
later times.
Vowels: Above, I said that the vowels were not written. But, a
few of these alphabetic signs are obviously vowels (pronounced "ah" or "ee") in
most modern languages. And signs with an "oo" or "w" sound were also used to
represent a foreign (Greek, and other languages) "o" sound. These were not
considered vowels, and sometimes had some guttural aspect. They are vowels in
English, but not in Egyptian. So we write the a, i, o, u sounds, as these are
Egyptian consonants.
If your name is David, then you could write it with five Egyptian signs
(all consonants), "Dafid" (sorry there is no "v" sound). But if your name is
Ben, I would write it "Bn," in Egyptian. And I would not write other silent
letters.
Actually the two "ah" signs in my list were not pronounced "ah." The
first one, the Egyptian vulture, was a guttural sound not found in English. It
was followed by an unwritten vowel, often an "ah" sound. And so it often
sounded very much like "ah," even though it was a consonant. The second "ah,"
the arm and hand, was a glottal stop, a short hesitation between vowel sounds,
like in Cockney "bottle," which sounds like "bah-uhl." This sign too often
sounded like "ah," not because it was a vowel, but because it was followed by
an unwritten vowel sound.
Other letters: Also, the lion which represented the "r" sound,
was often used for the foreign "L" sound. The "q" sound is apparently slightly
different from the "k" sound.