Hieroglyphic Writing

hieroglyphic writing, system that employs characters in the form of pictures. Those individual signs, called hieroglyphs, may be read either as pictures, as symbols for objects, or as symbols for sounds.

The name hieroglyphic (from the Greek word for “sacred carving”) is first encountered in the writings of Diodorus Siculus (1st century bce). Earlier, other Greeks had spoken of sacred signs when referring to Egyptian writing. Among the Egyptian scripts, the Greeks labeled as hieroglyphic the script that they found on temple walls and public monuments, in which the characters were pictures sculpted in stone. The Greeks distinguished this script from two other forms of Egyptian writing that were written with ink on papyrus or on other smooth surfaces. These were known as the hieratic, which was still employed during the time of the ancient Greeks for religious texts, and the demotic, the cursive script used for ordinary documents.

Hieroglyphic, in the strict meaning of the word, designates only the writing on Egyptian monuments. The word has, however, been applied since the late 19th century to the writing of other peoples, insofar as it consists of picture signs used as writing characters. For example, the name hieroglyphics is always used to designate the monumental inscriptions of the Indus civilization and of the Hittites, who also possessed other scripts, in addition to the Mayan, the Incan, and Easter Island writing forms and also the signs on the Phaistos Disk on Crete.

Because of their pictorial form, hieroglyphs were difficult to write and were used only for monument inscriptions. They were usually supplemented in the writing of a people by other, more convenient scripts. Among living writing systems, hieroglyphic scripts are no longer used.

This article is concerned only with Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.