What did the Egyptians need pictorial writing for?
Who doesn't know the Egyptian hieroglyphs? Those signs and symbols that adorned the walls of temples and palaces in ancient Egypt? With this pictorial writing the ancient Egyptians could express much more than "crocodile" or "palm tree". How were these symbols used and why did people even need writing back then?
Information about the Egyptians' picture writing
- The Egyptian picture writing is commonly referred to as hieroglyphs. They were developed over 3,000 years before the birth of Christ and used until the fourth century AD.
- The hieroglyphs are best known for their ideograms, i.e. symbols, each of which has a specific meaning. In addition, phonetic signs and determinatives were also used. (Determinatives assign a sign to a certain field of meaning.)
- At their wedding, the hieroglyphs contained around 7,000 different characters. So it was definitely a complex typeface that was able to transport even complicated content. From today's perspective, the characters were still a very cumbersome way of writing, mainly because they required a lot of space and their creation was quite time-consuming.
- Incidentally, the hieroglyphs were not deciphered until the 19th century. Century. The French Jean-François Champollion achieved this feat with the help of the Rosetta Stone. On this a text was written in ancient Greek, demotic and hieroglyphics. With his help, Champollion managed to find out what character was used in Egyptian.
What did people need hieroglyphs for?
- The ancient Egyptians needed writing for the same reasons we do today. Pictorial writing was a means of reliably transporting messages over a large distance or of preserving them over a long period of time. Of course, praises to certain pharaohs are particularly well known. However, everyday things could also be recorded.
- The oldest finds of the pictorial writing indicate that the hieroglyphs were initially mainly used in administration, as well as to fix important events. In the course of time, the fields of application have been expanded significantly.
- Hieroglyphs are by no means found exclusively on stone or clay. These media only have a particularly spectacular effect on us today, or they have the advantage of being durable for a very long time and therefore still legible today. However, the Egyptians also used papyrus (the forerunner of today's paper) or linen as a writing medium. The material they used was often related to what the written text was intended for. Messages on stone blocks are impractical.
What did the Egyptians need writing and mathematics for?
The culture of the ancient Egyptians fascinates many people. They created imposing structures ...
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