Egyptian hieroglyphs (group A)

In 1920, the English Egyptologist and philologist Wallis Badge was one of the first to catalog the writing marks of Ancient Egypt in the Dictionary of Egyptian Hieroglyphs. He conducted the classification based on the external signs of these signs. A group of hieroglyphs, similar to group A, is designated by the Roman numeral I and is called “A man (sitting, kneeling, bowing, lying)”, it has 143 hieroglyphs ^[1] . Following him, in 1927, also based on the division of hieroglyphs according to external features, another English Egyptologist and linguist A. H. Gardiner compiled a list in his “Egyptian Grammar” ^[2] . Over time, his list became generally accepted, and the database of hieroglyphs was replenished by adding new characters to the groups he proposed - most of the newly discovered hieroglyphs began to assign additional literal values ​​after the numbers. With the development of computer technology in 1991, a list of basic Unicode hieroglyphs was proposed, where group A is assigned a range from U + 13000 to U + 13050.

In parallel with filling the database with new hieroglyphs on the basis of traditional classification, some scholars had thoughts about the wrong separation by appearance, and studies began to appear where the signs were ordered by values. So in 2007–2008, the grammar of D. Kurt ^[3] came out, where he canceled A. H. Gardiner's groups for the later stage of the language and introduced a new codification, but it is not known whether it will take root in Egyptology ^[4] .

The technical solution of writing ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in modern computer fonts is possible with the help of various graphic editors for typing. So, Wikipedia uses the “WikiHiero” script, the markup of which is shown in the second column and implemented using the tags <hiero> and </ hiero> ( see also: Wikipedia: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ). The third column indicates if the hieroglyph is directly described in the grammar A. H. Gardiner , and also indicates the numbers of Unicode characters and the correspondences with the numbers of characters in D. Kurt's latest grammar, the remaining hieroglyphic codes, given without explanation, are traditionally accepted in Egyptology for new characters on the basis of A. H. Gardiner's list. In the Phonogram , Determinative and Ideogram columns, the phonetic meanings and words of the Egyptian language are transmitted by means of MdC (“Manuel de codage”) transliteration published by Egyptologists J. Buurman, N. Grimal and others in 1988 (in system uses only ASCII characters ). If some hieroglyphs of A. H. Gardiner’s list do not go in order, then “this is connected either with the identification of the sign after the list of hieroglyphs is published or with the desire to present the sign to a more suitable place than in the first edition” (A. H. Gardiner) .

Comments

Sources

• Gardiner AH Egyptian Grammar. Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs .. - 3rd Ed., Revised. - Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1957 (1st Ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1927). - ISBN 978-0-900416-35-4 .
• Allen JP Middle Egyptian. An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. - Second editon, revised. - Cambridge University Press, 2010. - ISBN 978-0-511-77617-5 .
• Valeurs phonétiques des signes hiéroglyphiques d'époque gréco romaine. - Montpellier: Université de Montpellier, 1988-1995.
• Kurth D. Einführung ins Ptolemäische. Eine Grammatik mit Zeichenliste und Übungsstücken. - Hützel: Backe-Verlag, 2007-2008. - T. 1, 2. - 1139 p. - ISBN 978-3-9810869-1-1 , 978-3-9810869-3-5.

• Hieroglyphs of group A

Editors of hieroglyphic texts:

• "JSesh Hieroglyphic Editor"
• "WikiHiero"
• "Hieroglyphica" (Russia)