Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with a total of some 1,000 distinct characters. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Through the Phoenician alphabet's major child systems, the Greek and Aramaic scripts, the Egyptian hieroglyphic script is ancestral to the majority of scripts in modern use, most prominently the Latin and Cyrillic scripts and the Arabic script and Brahmic family of scripts.
Heliopolis was a major city of ancient Egypt. It was the capital of the 13th or Heliopolite Nome of Lower Egypt and a major religious center. It is now located in Ayn Shams, a northeastern suburb of Cairo.
Seshat, under various spellings, was the ancient Egyptian goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and writing. She was seen as a scribe and record keeper, and her name means she who scrivens, and is credited with inventing writing. She also became identified as the goddess of accounting, architecture, astronomy, astrology, building, mathematics, and surveying.
Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once commonly known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian, not Hittite, and the term Luwian hieroglyphs is used in English publications. They are typologically similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs, but do not derive graphically from that script, and they are not known to have played the sacred role of hieroglyphs in Egypt. There is no demonstrable connection to Hittite cuneiform.
Hieroglyphic Luwian (luwili) is a variant of the Luwian language, recorded in official and royal seals and a small number of monumental inscriptions. It is written in a hieroglyphic script known as Anatolian hieroglyphs.
The Çineköy inscription is a Hieroglyphic Luwian-Phoenician bilingual inscription, uncovered in 1997 in Çineköy, Adana Province, Turkey. The village of Çineköy lies 30 km south of Adana.
The ancient Egyptian ship's mast hieroglyph is one of the oldest language hieroglyphs from Ancient Egypt. It is used on a famous label of Pharaoh Den of the First dynasty, but forms part of the location hieroglyph: Emblem of the East.
The Egyptian hieroglyph for "black" in Gardiner's sign list is numbered I6. Its phonetic value is km. The Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache-(Dictionary of the Egyptian Language) lists no less than 24 different terms of km indicating 'black' such as black stone, metal, wood, hair, eyes, and animals.
The Egyptian hieroglyph Emblem of the West represents the goddess Imentet, personification of the afterlife. It is composed of a hawk or ostrich feather. The alternate version of the symbol contains the complete figure of the hawk, for Horus, with the feather extending sideways, making it similar to the iat standard, surmounted by individual gods. The feather is associated with the headdress worn by the Libyans.
The pectorals of ancient Egypt were a form of jewelry, often represented as a brooch. These were mostly worn by richer people and the pharaoh.
Akhet is an Egyptian hieroglyph that represents the sun rising over a mountain. It is translated as "horizon" or "the place in the sky where the sun rises". Betrò describes it as "Mountain with the Rising Sun" and an ideogram for "horizon".
The Egyptian hieroglyph representing gold, phonetic value nb, is important due to its use in the Horus-of-Gold name, one of the Fivefold Titulary names of the Egyptian pharaoh.
The ancient Egyptian Branch hieroglyph, also called a Stick, is a member of the trees and plants hieroglyphs.
The ancient Egyptian Adze on a Wood Block, or Axe in a Block of Woodhieroglyph, Gardiner sign listed no. U20, is a portrayal of the adze. It is used mostly in the cartouches of pharaonic names especially, or other important names.
The ancient Egyptian Sky hieroglyph,, is Gardiner sign listed no. N1, within the Gardiner signs for sky, earth, and water.
The ancient Egyptian Pick hieroglyph, Gardiner sign listed nos. U17, U18 is a portrayal of a 'pick upon the side view of a block'; it is in the Gardiner subset for agriculture, crafts, and professions.
The Hippopotamus (hieroglyph) is Gardiner sign listed no. E25, in the category of mammals. It is used in Egyptian hieroglyphs as a determinative in words designating the animal, in Egyptian as db, and kh3b.
The nomen of Ancient Egyptian pharaohs was one of the "great five names". It was introduced by king Djedefre, third pharaoh of the 4th Dynasty, as an emendation to the traditional nswt-bity crest. The nomen was later separated from the prenomen to become an independent royal name.
The Ancient Egyptian Bread bun hieroglyph is Gardiner sign listed no. X1 for the side view of a bread bun. It is also the simple shape of a semicircle. The hieroglyph is listed under the Gardiner category of loaves and cakes.
