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Egypt The
most spectacular scripts of the history are the ones that
were developed in Egypt and in Sumer, in the 4th millennium
BC. The scripts on the clay signs in which some signs
similar to some nails were scratched, in Sumer, and the
Egyptian hieroglyphs, offered to the archeologists – after
the graphic systems were decoded – more than 4000 years of
records about the everyday life that fascinate even today.
Without the scripts, the human antique history`s recovery
would have been impossible. |
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The Egyptian scripts developed on the
principle of the visual representations application at
schematic level. For example, the glifa that corresponds to
the consonant-sound ‘m’ in the ancient Egyptian is
represented with a eagle, and the glifa corresponding to the
vocal ‘a’ took the form of an ibis. The extremely complex
scripts of the ancient Egypt were the privilege of the
scribes or of the religious orders members.
Not even the all pharaohs knew the
Egyptian scripts, the incontestable supremacy of the scribes
lasted till the end of the Egyptian state, and the last
period of using the hieroglyphs was in the 4th century A.D.
In line with the hieroglyphic scripts, the Egyptians
developed other two types: the hieratic script used by
priests, being a simplification of the hieroglyphs, and the
demotic script, the script used by the people. After a
period of almost 1.500 years of oblivion, the hieroglyphs
were deciphered at the beginning of the 19th (1822) century
by Jean Francois Champollion.
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The ancient Egyptians
believed that the script was a gift from the god Thoth.
‘Hieroglyphs’, the word we use today to describe the ancient
Egyptian symbols, actually comes from a Greek word that
means ‘sacred inscription’. This idea remains even today in
the modern Egypt. The official language is Arab now and the
Muslims think that the written variant of the language is a
sacred art dedicated to their god Allah. For many years, the
scientists believed that each hieroglyph was an image that
replaced an entire word. But no matter they tried, they
didn`t manage to resolve the puzzle. |
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And then, the French soldiers
discovered the Rosetta stone in the North Egypt and all the
mystery started to get over step by step. A French science
man, Jean Francois Champollion who knew the Greek and the
Coptic- a form of ancient Egyptian, still spoken in some
regions of Egypt and Ethiopia, discovered that the
hieroglyphic signs can function like the letters of a modern
alphabet, and came with the first translation of the
hieroglyphs.
The scribes were so vital for the
ancient Egyptians like the doctors, mechanics for us today.
The scribes were so important that they don` t had to work
on the ground, to help at the temples building or to fight
in the army. They were often shown sitting with a papyrus
sheet on their knees. They used to write on long sheets of
papyrus from plants that grew on the Nile` s shores. Some of
the sheets could be longer than 30 meters. |
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