The Ancient Hieroglyphics

Back in ancient times, the development of the first urban cultures was due to gradual changes and advancements that contributed to a communal society. As agriculture and specialized jobs started to become the norm in early cities, citizens began to realize that they were missing something that was crucial to their productivity and organization: a system of writing and recordkeeping. While most ancient civilizations created a form of writing, Mesopotamian and Egyptian societies utilized them for more than just recordkeeping. These advancements serve as ancient origins of how we use written language in the present day. While there are currently countless forms of writing in the modern age, the concept of writing and literacy is treasured

Beowulf speaks volumes about the ways of life during the Anglo-Saxon period. It is to England what Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad are to Greece. It is, as some call it, the mother poem of England. This mother poem has been passed down through oral tradition for numerous years and scholars believe that an educated Christian monk transcribed the poem, preserving it in written form. Beowulf has survived for nearly 1,300 years due to how well it conveys the Anglo-Saxon culture and the unique characteristics of the poem in its imagery, tone, style and diction.

Important alphabets would include the Greek alphabet, which was the first phonemic alphabet. These are alphabets that are, “…sets of letters, usually arranged in a fixed order, each of which represents one or more phonemes, both consonants and vowels, in the language they are used to write.” (Ager) From this came the two most widely used alphabets, the Latin/Roman and the Cyrillic alphabets, which have been adapted to write numerous languages. From the periods of these writing systems, letters would have begun to spring up as a form of communication between people who were not readily available to give information to immediately.

I shall therefore take only a very small portion of Beowulf, eight verses (four lines), and attempt, by means of references to similar verses and lines in the rest of the poem and in other surviving Anglo-Saxon poems, to illustrate the thesis that the making of any Anglo-Saxon poem was a process of choosing rapidly and largely on the basis of alliterative [italics mine] needs not between individual words but between formulas (142).

Most pyramids were very big. Pyramids were tombs for kings. They buried all of their kings there. It would take multiple years to build a pyramid. Pyramids had cool designs on the inside walls. They stop building pyramids because they were too easy to rob them. Especially since kings had so much jewelry and robbers would dig them out and take their stuff.

Writing is the physical manifestation of a spoken language. Between 50,000 and 30,000, evidence of language appeared with cave paintings. However, it wasn’t until 3500 BCE when Sumerian people of Mesopotamia started writing called cuneiform. This writing used specific marks in wet clay with a reed implement. These scripts were based on pictorial symbols and later mixed with phonetic elements.

The ancient Egyptians called Hieroglyphics the language of the gods, and they were used mainly by the high priests, and royalty. The person who primarily did the reading in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics was the temple priests. Hieroglyphics were written in horizontal rows or/and vertical columns and they were read by the royals ,from left to right or from right to left. The higher symbols were frequently read before the lower symbols. There are not hieroglyphics for all of the letters used in our alphabet in modern day, because the Egyptian didn’t use all our vowels we use today. Some of the symbols and signs used in the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt were similar to simple pictograms and meanings through their symbolism and signs that resemble

Cuneiform: Type of writing developed by ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia(3500-3000 BCE). Thought to be the most significant of the Sumerians and the best among those of Uruk which is a Sumerian City that advanced the writing of cuneiform.

The Phoenician Alphabet was developed by the Phoenician around 1100 BCE. It was a less complicated writing system that consisted of 22 consonant sounds that were characterized by symbols or letters. Words and phrases could be represented by combining letters or symbols. Being easier to learn than cuneiform or hieroglyphics, the alphabet was spread by Phoenician merchants across the Western Mediterranean to keep track of trade and aided in the spread of reading and writing. The Phoenician alphabet would be adapted by the Romans and modified by the Greeks, who added vowels, and would eventually be embraced by the world. becoming the foundation for the phonetic alphabet used by the English-speaking world today.

Use picture words to write called hieroglyphics is a very old form of writing that they started using as early as 3000 BC hieroglyphics was a very complicated way of writing involving thousands of symbols some of the symbols represented sounds like our letters and other is represented in Tire words more about hieroglyphics hieroglyphics was different from left to right right to left or top to bottom The riding with And be beautiful to look at a single picture symbol could stand for a whole word called an idea gram or a sound called a sonogram for example the pictures and I can mean the word I or the letter i scribes since writing and hieroglyphics was so complicated it took years of education and practice to be able to do it the people who

There are seven hundred different symbols in hieroglyphics. In fact, the ancient egyptians didn’t even use punctuation to separate the end of sentences and words. They also didn’t place spaces after each word like we do in english. Another unique thing about the ancient egyptians was that they didn’t use vowels when translating or writing with hieroglyphics. Another scribe based off of hieroglyphics was known as hieratic writing. Hieratic writing was a simplified version of hieroglyphics. Hieratic is almost like using abbreviations like we do now while texting or writing quick notes to friends. It simplifies the complex drawings of hieroglyphics. In this writing form it also uses a form of cursive. After the creation of hieratic writing

Hieroglyphic symbols are pleasing to the eye. But understanding the ancient script is difficult and, unless you’re interested in the finer points of Egyptian religion make tedious reading (the contents of hieratic papyri are far more fascinating). However, understanding of the hieroglyphic writing system can be fun as well as instructive. With a bit of study, it is possible to quickly gain enough knowledge to recognize the names of the pharaohs, – useful if you are planning a trip to Egypt.

The Cuneiform script, an early form of language consisting of pictographic symbols, was first created by the Sumerians and later built on by other cultures. Written on wet clay tablets, Cuneiform symbols were drawn with a long reed crafted into a writing instrument, also known as a stylus. The stylus created wedge shapes, which is why the name cuneiform was assigned to it. Cuneiform translates to "wedge shaped". Some Languages included in the Cuneiform classification were Sumerian, Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, Hattic, and Urartian. Cuneiform was primarily used during the time period that lasted between the 30th century BC to 1st century AD.

Hieroglyphic symbols are pleasing to the eye; everyone wants to see their name in hieroglyphs. But understanding the ancient script is difficult and, unless you’re interested in the finer points of Egyptian religion, make tedious reading (the contents of hieratic papyri are far more fascinating). However, gaining some understanding of the hieroglyphic writing system can be fun as well as instructive. With a bit of study it is possible to quickly gain enough knowledge to recognise the names of pharaohs – useful if you are planning a trip to Egypt.

Hieroglyphics are pictures or symbols that represent words that Ancient Egyptians used in conversations. The use of Hieroglyphics began around 3000 B.C. They would use Hieroglyphics for the next 3500 years.