Talk:List of Egyptian hieroglyphs

Merge templates (2019)

Eventual cleanup

Our coverage of hieroglyphs has been completely wrecked by an over-enthusiastic editor with limited knowledge on the matter.

The aim of the cleanup project should be something like List of cuneiform signs, i.e. a well-referenced lookup table translating between existing academic conventions. The Unicode block will be a good starting point, as they essentially did exactly the same work already. --dab (𒁳) 11:08, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

• I tried to incorporate the information in the tables. Lots of cleanup work still needed. The information is basically duplicated in the Gardiner list sub-pages and in the "alphabetic by English description" pages, which I have made a subpage to this one, Talk:List of Egyptian hieroglyphs/workpage. I think most information is just duplicate, but of course it may be worthwhile to plod through it all. --dab (𒁳) 15:29, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Might this help?: http://web.ff.cuni.cz/ustavy/egyptologie/pdf/Gardiner_signlist.pdf --98.219.113.7 (talk) 09:36, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

For those looking for a list of articles to hieroglyph pages to sort out, see Category:Articles to be merged from November 2017. Klbrain (talk) 10:33, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

How are we going to do this? We have the workpage which according to me looks promising, but lacks most determinative usages or we could use the current list copying most of the fields from other articles. I have just about no knowledge about hieroglyphics and would really like someone with more expertise on the subject matter to pitch in. I am willing to do the time consuming copying and merging work, however I do not feel qualified to perform major editorial decisions on my own. Trialpears (talk) 19:17, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Comments on merger

I intend on performing the merger of all the lists for individual series into this list. I am however not at all familiar with hieroglyphics from before and I have some questions before actually performing it. The lists are not standarised in the format they used with the fields determinative, ideogram, translitteration, phonetic, value, depiction and description all being used at varios places. The determinative and ideogram fields seem to contain the same of almost the same information and I intend on fusing them if no one with better knowledge on the subject objects. Likewise depiction and description seem to be possible to fuse.

The most difficult part seems to be the phonetics, transliteration and the things in parenthesis in other sections. I believe these are mostly reffering to similar things but I feel like I need assistance in how to handle them. Trialpears 16:26, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Without knowing very much about the subject, I have to admit, I'm wondering how bits of (sometimes misspelled) German such as this

>> itself wiedersetzten (btjn) <<

got themselves into the list.

1) itself wiedersetzen looks like a half-translation + misspelling of sich widersetzen (meaning "refuse to comply", "resist", "defy" etc.).

2) Shouldn't there be a key to the likes of "(btjn)", explaining how and why some of these transliterations (?) are parenthesized, some italicized, and others neither?

3) Some of the other strange instances of German in the table, such as gib! (for "give") are in bold, vomieren (= "vomit") not. Again, I wonder why?

-- Picapica (talk) 07:24, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Phallic hieroglyphs censored?

The table remarks that the three "phallus" hieroglyphs, D52, D52A, and D53, are "Censored by some OS/browser vendors." Can we get a citation for this, together with more specifics than "some"? It seems to me more likely that the glyphs have just been omitted by some fonts—which is also worth noting, but is something different to being censored by the OS or browser. (Censorship implies that the glyphs are available, but the software refuses to render them.)

Results of a Google search only come up with anecdotal "it doesn't appear for me on this combination", e.g.

• https://boingboing.net/2018/10/31/can-you-see-the-penis-characte.html
• https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/a6orj3/how_can_i_get_this_hieroglyph_%F0%93%82%BA_to_show_up/

And this page claims that it is the font—specifically Microsoft's Segoe UI Historic:

• https://www.spludlow.co.uk/DrawPrint/Fonts.aspx#_Toc513634469

-- Perey (talk) 05:40, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@Perey: "Censored" is the word used by this blog and this Unicode list site. Unless the reader is super familiar with Unicode or Typography, saying "censored" is clearer than "the glyphs are not available." --Voidvector (talk) 10:04, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Voidvector: There are two issues here, which I should have been clearer not to confuse.

1. Is "censored" an apt description? (This is not the issue I'm mainly concerned with, though it's worth getting into at some point. And I'm not sure either of the sources you linked would be the best choice.)
2. Is this an action of "some OS/browser vendors"? (This is the issue I should have emphasised. What I meant was, "The phrasing seems to imply that the glyphs are available but that software makers deliberately stop them from rendering.")

The evidence seems to be that it's not "browser vendors", and it's only an "OS vendor" in the sense that Microsoft provides both the Windows OS and the Segoe UI Historic font. "Font vendors" would be better phrasing in that case. But again, I really would like to see some good citations for this—not the anecdotes I found—specifying which vendors and which fonts. -- Perey (talk) 10:41, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Perey: If there was a good citation for this, I would've added it. The previous editor indicated issue with Firefox (see edit summary). I observed it with Windows, but don't have time to verify all OS/browser combinations.

Either way, the note is simply intended as technical help text, not encyclopedic info. It is just like Help:Multilingual_support which isn't thoroughly cited. Feel free to edit to anything else you deem factual. --Voidvector (talk) 02:00, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

@Perey: I'm no longer on Windows 10 to confirm this, but when I was using it, I found that by pairing a phallic hieroglyph with another hieroglyph by putting them right next to each other, the phallic hieroglyph would render. I only tested that on Chromium-based browsers (and possibly also Notepad?) but I recall the addition of another hieroglyph right next to it having allowed the phallic hieroglyph to render each time. WhatShouldBeDoneHmm (talk) 16:57, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

This is correct - Windows draws hieroglyphs from "Segoe UI Historic Regular", stored at C:\Windows\Fonts\seguihis.ttf, and in that file the glyphs at those three Unicode addresses, U+130B8, U+130B9 and U+130BA, are that rectangle: https://i.imgur.com/CrvWAYg.png

However, as this decision was made presumably dissuade the use of those characters for vandalism, there needed to be allowances for when those hieroglyphs were being used in earnest...and so, the actual glyphs ARE stored in the file! They're towards the end of the data, in a block without Unicode addresses: https://i.imgur.com/PGUYGfl.png. If Windows sees one of those three Unicode addresses with a second adjacent hieroglyph address, the glyphs from the end of the file are used and the glyph is rendered correctly...so they're not excluded from the default font, it's just that Windows is willing to do Unicode wrong for moralising reasons.

I took those screenshots myself earlier today, and I don't think I can self-cite. There's a lovely edit just waiting for the right person to make it.

𓀿𓂺 One cookie (talk) 20:56, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Alif

Congrats folks on a useful list. Got its flaws, but we all do. Here's a flaw easy to fix. The editors of this page have taken such care to get things right, might as well try for perfection: those 3's should properly each be what Unicode calls the Egyptological alef, Ꜣ (two flavors, upper- and lower-case: U+A722, U+A723).

24.136.4.218 (talk) 21:01, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. The table now is in table form (with a formatting per-row template). More easy to search & check. We can use this input. (Does "Alif" have a gardiner ID?) -DePiep (talk) 21:00, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Table by template now

I have made the big table list into a template. Each row has it's own entry line.

See {{List of hieroglyphs}}.

Testcase to check old info vs. current info is here:

{{List of Egyptian hieroglyphs/testcases}}

-DePiep (talk) 02:17, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Gardiner alphabet description

From: unicode doc

According to Gardiner’s identification scheme, Egyptian Hieroglyphs are classified according to letters of the alphabet, so A000 is “Man and his occupations”, B000 is “Woman and her occupations”, C000 is “Anthropomorphic deities”, D000 is “Parts of the human body”, E000 is “Mammals”, F000 is “Parts of mammals”, G000 is “Birds”, H000 is “Parts of birds”, I000 is “Amphibious animals, reptiles, etc.”, K000 is “Fishes and parts of fishes”, L000 is Invertebrata and lesser animals”, M000 is “Trees and plants”, N000 is “Sky, earth, water”, O000 is “Buildings, parts of buildings, etc.”, P000 is “Ships and parts of ships”, Q000 is “Domestic and funerary furniture”, R000 is “Temple furniture and sacred emblems”, S000 is “Crowns, dress, staves, etc.”, T000 is “Warfare, hunting, butchery”, U000 is “Agriculture, crafts, and professions”, V000 is “Rope, fibre, baskets, bags, etc.”, W000 is “Vessels of stone and earthenware”, X000 is “Loaves and cakes”, Y000 is “Writings, games, music”, Z000 is “Strokes, signs derived from Hieratic, geometrical features”, and AA000 is used for “Unclassified” signs. "(Unicode) Everson et al., -DePiep (talk) 02:30, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Implemented. -DePiep (talk) 21:33, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

• There is a new direction of development opened at Template talk:List of hieroglyphs § Sign functions, involving TSL. -DePiep (talk) 00:00, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Y3

New edit shows for char Y3 the phonetic value zẖꜣ,... it has no basis in Gardiner. Please add Source or remove! Thanks.

Table improvements

Since creating this table back in Feb 2021, I have met and learned some more about hieroglyphs. In short, it's that phonetics are not just a side topic but a full second meaning of a sign.

So I question whether our presentation of the phonetics (in this list) should be improved. To me, it looks like (see A2 below):

Each transliteration can-have/has an individual connected phonetic.

If correct, these better be listed in their own column (standalone & more prominent than ()-bracketed), correctly aligned with their translit.

Let's add to the 100-year celebrations :-) -DePiep (talk) 10:05, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Examples

Following talk progress, examples may evolve over time

As is

A2 from current list 10:00, 4 Nov 2022 (UTC):

List of Egyptian hieroglyphs [As is, 4 Nov 2022]
Hieroglyph	Gardiner Unicode	Description	Transliteration	Phonetic	Notes
​	A		Man and his occupations
𓀁	A2 U+13001	man with hand to mouth	eat (wnm) drink (zwr) speak, think, recount (sḏd) refrain from speech, be(come) silent (gr) love (mrj)		Activities involving the mouth, head, or ideas

-DePiep (talk) 10:05, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Demo-1

(hardcoded)

List of Egyptian hieroglyphs [Demo-1]
Hieroglyph	Gardiner Unicode	Description	Transliteration	Phonetic	Notes
​	A		Man and his occupations
𓀁	A2 U+13001	man with hand to mouth	eat drink speak, think, recount refrain from speech, be(come) silent love	(wnm) (zwr) (sḏd) (gr) (mrj)	Activities involving the mouth, head, or ideas

Added demo-1. Keep the brackets? -DePiep (talk) 10:13, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

This looks like a great improvement, and incidentally it comes close to addressing my question below (“Is ‘transliteration’ the right term?”). (Personally, the brackets seem superfluous given that they have their own column and are italicized. )

While the separations of the definitions and phonetic forms are a great help, I still feel that the term Transliteration is inappropriate as a column header over the definitions; if anything, the column labeled Phonetic is more like a transliteration, but “eat”, “drink”, etc are certainly not.

Perhaps this is too much to ask, as it might be a significant amount of work (if I could learn about all this templating jazz I’d be happy to help), but what about trying to represent all uses of each sign, including ideographic and determinative meanings? Mark van Nederhof has broken those usages down as an XML file, see [1]. Just thinking out loud. babbage (talk) 15:35, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Is ‘transliteration’ the right term?

Hi all, I’m a dilettante in the Egyptology world, but I find myself quite perplexed as to why the term ‘transliteration’ is used in this article. I can’t think of a any sense of ‘transliteration’ that applies to the content of the column it heads; there are senses associated with particular forms, which are in a Latin transliteration (wnm, etc.), is that what the term refers to? Or is this maybe just how the term is used in Egyptology? babbage (talk) 17:10, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

"hide (jmn)"

-- So Transliteration is similar to phonetic. There might be a "3" symbol(transcribed value), that has a phonetic of "a". The "(jmn)" is the transliteration, where "hide" is a translation. The column could be renamed to Translation/Transliteration, since it usually shows both. Alternatively, the transliteration value could be moved/combined into the Phonetic.

Basically, there could be multiple a's or t's, etc... but if you see a 3, it should always be the Amora - eagle/falcon glyph. The most common glyphs get a single character, and other ones where the whole word is known get 2 or 3 characters. Vowels are typically skipped. 2601:58B:E7F:8410:FD45:D108:B093:8EB5 (talk) 21:46, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

What are they really, though?

The rare book that says what's represented by individual glyphs is Ancient Egyptian Calligraphy. It wasn't immediately obvious to me how to edit these in, so I'll mention them here for now, maybe add to the article later. k7 blowfish m29 seed pod m30 sweet-tasting root m31,32 stylized rhizome of lotus m40 bundle of reeds n18 bolt of cloth n23 irrigation canal n28 sun rising behind hill n31 road bordered by shrubs (to me, dubious) o28 column o29 wooden column o42,43 fence o44 emblem of Min temple o49 crossroads s43 walking stick t3,4 pyriform mace t12 cord (I think they conceived of this one as a knot or noose, since I think it may have been confused with v4 in the Soleb/Amara-west inscriptions) t21 harpoon t25 reed float t26 bird trap t28 chopping block u22,23 chisel u30 potters kiln u34 spindle u36b fullers club v4 lasso v18 life preserver v23 whip Temerarius (talk) 23:40, 29 August 2024 (UTC) Temerarius (talk) 23:40, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

References