Writing with ancient egyptian hieroglyphics
Hieroglyphics were the symbolic and phonetic written language of Ancient Egypt. The complete hieroglyphic language is very complex with thousands of different characters which roughly fall into three main categories: symbols representing individual phonetic letters (e.g. like an alphabet), symbols representing whole words or phrases (e.g. king, beast, all that is within), and symbols used to modify the other two categories to indicate an enhanced or specific meaning (e.g. his, hers, a specific type of bird, etc.). The precise meaning of all the hieroglyphic characters was forgotten long ago and it was not until the discovery and translation of the Rosetta Stone (check it out in the British Museum!) in the 1820s that they were again understood. The Rosetta Stone was a large black granite-like stone carved with the same decree written in 196 BC in three different languages: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic script, and ancient Greek, which was a huge breakthrough for deciphering the meaning of the ancient hieroglyphic language.
There are several variations of the hieroglyphic alphabet and numerous online translators where you can enter a name and the program will auto-magically generate the hieroglyphic version. This is my “custom” version of the alphabet which I drew when I first started writing this book series. My version uses cooler-looking variations of some of the letters (e.g. a falcon instead of a creepy-looking vulture for ‘A’, and I swapped the traditional ‘I’ and ‘E’ to make my arm tattoo look cooler) and also tracings of actual ancient hieroglyphics for several of the more complex symbols. Note that the letters represent sounds in the English language, and thus the symbol to choose depends on the sound that the letter makes in the word you are writing (e.g. a hard C sound would use C, but a soft C would use the symbol for S). To keep it simple on the reader, I used these “straight” letters instead of the more correct phonetic versions in all the book illustrations if you want to translate them.
The cartouche of Tutankhamun was not directly spelled with individual alphabetic letters but used other symbology to represent his name in nomen form as “living image of Amun, ruler of the Upper Egyptian Heliopolis.” The most beautiful version of his cartouche (in my opinion) is on the front of his stunning second funerary casket in gold with exquisite blue, cyan and red inlaid symbols.
You can use this hieroglyphic alphabet for writing names, words, or whatever you like.
There are several variations of the hieroglyphic alphabet and numerous online translators where you can enter a name and the program will auto-magically generate the hieroglyphic version. This is my “custom” version of the alphabet which I drew when I first started writing this book series. My version uses cooler-looking variations of some of the letters (e.g. a falcon instead of a creepy-looking vulture for ‘A’, and I swapped the traditional ‘I’ and ‘E’ to make my arm tattoo look cooler) and also tracings of actual ancient hieroglyphics for several of the more complex symbols. Note that the letters represent sounds in the English language, and thus the symbol to choose depends on the sound that the letter makes in the word you are writing (e.g. a hard C sound would use C, but a soft C would use the symbol for S). To keep it simple on the reader, I used these “straight” letters instead of the more correct phonetic versions in all the book illustrations if you want to translate them.
The cartouche of Tutankhamun was not directly spelled with individual alphabetic letters but used other symbology to represent his name in nomen form as “living image of Amun, ruler of the Upper Egyptian Heliopolis.” The most beautiful version of his cartouche (in my opinion) is on the front of his stunning second funerary casket in gold with exquisite blue, cyan and red inlaid symbols.
You can use this hieroglyphic alphabet for writing names, words, or whatever you like.
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