Talk:Egyptian hieroglyphs

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WikiProject Ancient Egypt to-do list:

Needed articles.

We should have an article on every pyramid and every nome in Ancient Egypt. I'm sure the rest of us can think of other articles we should have.

Cleanup.

To start with, most of the general history articles badly need attention. And I'm told that at least some of the dynasty articles need work. Any other candidates?

Standardize the Chronology.

A boring task, but the benefit of doing it is that you can set the dates !(e.g., why say Khufu lived 2589-2566? As long as you keep the length of his reign correct, or cite a respected source, you can date it 2590-2567 or 2585-2563)

Stub sorting

Anyone? I consider this probably the most unimportant of tasks on Wikipedia, but if you believe it needs to be done . . .

Data sorting.

This is a project I'd like to take on some day, & could be applied to more of Wikipedia than just Ancient Egypt. Take one of the standard authorities of history or culture -- Herotodus, the Elder Pliny, the writings of Breasted or Kenneth Kitchen, & see if you can't smoothly merge quotations or information into relevant articles. Probably a good exercise for someone who owns one of those impressive texts, yet can't get access to a research library.

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Obscure word example

O34-G38-G1-A47-D54 - keep, watch
This particular word does not exist in Faulkner, Vygus, Dickson, or AED(German) dictionaries, with a g38, but does exist with a g39 (wrong goose is shown). And the translation is wrong according to 3 dictionaries, and is based solely on the A47 glyph (guard determinitive).

There is no coptic equivalent of keep or watch starting with an s, or an s-s; the translation is suspect. The word has multiple determinatives(ignored glyphs), and is a bad teaching example.
O34-s [in ptolemys]
G39-Coptic smoune - goose, large duck (not gb/geb as in g38)
G1-Coptic Ahom - eagle, vulture
A47-Coptic eloiH? - shepherd (determinative?)(or guard determinitive?)
D54 - walk/move determinative or suffix?

"linger, await, creep" -- AED/Dickson/Vygus

Determinatives

Could determinatives be considered a type of pictograph? (Ancient Egyptian really doesn’t adhere to any modern category of writing which makes defining it so difficult!) Legendarycool (talk) 08:02, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It entirely depends on what definition you use: if we understand pictograph in its broadest but most fraught sense of "a graph that visually resembles something", then sometimes. If we use a narrower but more well-defined sense as "a graph that evokes the physical appearance of its referent", then usually no, as determinatives were used for semantic classes of words, and were sometimes totally abstracted, like 𓈇—could you expect any human to tell you what that should represent if they didn't already know the convention? Remsense ‥ 论 08:41, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So they’re not quite pictographs but they don’t always have phonetic values so maybe just calling them determinatives would work? It’s also kind of an issue because sometimes a character will represent a syllable, sometimes a logogram or just an idea. Legendarycool (talk) 09:31, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They're usually specifically called "determinatives" for a good reason. Remsense ‥ 论 09:41, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I’ll add that to the list.

P.S thanks for responding quickly as usually it takes a day or two to get a response. Legendarycool (talk) 10:18, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Did some research, they’re called ideographs Legendarycool (talk) 10:30, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Like generally things with no phonetic component but meaning are called ideograms not that hieroglyphs that are like that aren’t determinatives. Legendarycool (talk) 10:31, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's a complicated term, it just means 'idea-writing'. That wouldn't be an accurate description of its actual function if it's being used as a phonetic determinative, since it's only representing a sound, not an idea. However, sometimes the use of determinatives is closer to 'idea-writing' than many other written symbols often called ideographs are, like Chinese characters, which never represent ideas directly, only words (hence often logographs 'word-writing')Remsense ‥ 论 10:47, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ambiguous Redirects

Things like Hieroglyph, Hieroglyphs, Hieroglyphic, Hieroglyphics, etc., can all refer to many different hieroglyphs. At least to me, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for these words to lead to a page about a specific one. The topic may even deserve an entire page of its own. Yes, I know Egyptian hieroglyphs are the most well known, but that still doesn't make too much sense for people who are looking for information about hieroglyphs in general. But they should at the very least lead to Hieroglyph (disambiguation). CheeseyHead (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I tend to think the contents of hieroglyph (disambiguation) should be moved to hieroglyph. But it's a change that would need discussion, and there isn't a lot of activity on this page. You might get more attention for the suggestion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Writing systems. A. Parrot (talk) 20:42, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hieroglyph is essentially a cultural term, and has no real rigorous definition or conceptual utility for scholars. It literally means 'holy writing'. If "taken literally", it is not an adequate term to characterize any writing system used throughout human history, including the Egyptian logography. Hieroglyph et al. redirect here because this is the page people are looking for when they type it in—any other writing or sign system called hieroglyphs is done so almost purely due to some surface-level similarity to Egyptian hieroglyphs, whether purely visual, sociolinguistic, or otherwise. Remsense ‥ 论 20:51, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hieroglyph to real-world object identification

My corner of interest in hieroglyphs, a topic that could use work on Wikipedia, starts with object identification. Just noting two books I've found that concern themselves with this, "Think like an Egyptian: 100 hieroglyphs" Barry Kemp 2005 and Henry George Fischer's Ancient Egyptian Calligraphy 1988. Neither is a particularly good book, but that's all right. Temerarius (talk) 21:14, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I noted some from the latter on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Egyptian_hieroglyphs

Temerarius (talk) 21:15, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]