List some things you might have to read on a daily basis in order to get through your day (reading a cereal box, reading instructions on a piece of technology, reading directions when travelling, reading ingredients on a package, etc.). What would it be like to work as a scribe in Ancient Egypt? How long do you think it would have taken a scribe to learn to read and write 800 hieroglyphs? How does the number of hieroglyphs in your name compare to the number of letters?ĭo you find it easier to write your name in hieroglyphs or English?
Do your best to break down the sounds - for example, ancient Egyptians did not have the letter ‘x’, so in foreign names, the sound was represented by using ‘ks’. Remember that not all languages have the same sounds you may find that there is a sound in your name that is not in the ancient Egyptian alphabet. *Underline* any double letters in your name that are only pronounced once. If you don't hear the letter twice, don't repeat the hieroglyph. If you have double letters in your name, say your name out loud and listen to hear if the double letter is really sounded out twice. Look for these letter combinations and *circle them*. Does yoru name have a 'sh', 'ch', or 'th' sound? You will only need one hieroglyph for these. Look for silent letters in your name and *put a line through them*. If there are letters in your name that are not sounded out, don't write them in hieroglyphs. Look for these tricky things in particular: Write out your name the way you usually do on a piece of scrap paper. Sometimes, the Egyptians just had to get as close as they could to the sound of the foreign name.
If you have ever learned to speak another language, you’ve noticed that not all languages have the same sounds. This could be difficult, since other languages sometimes had sounds that Egyptians found hard to make. When writing their names, ancient Egyptians could sometimes take shortcuts and write the symbols for gods or common words, but when writing the names of foreigners, they would have to sound the names out. Hieroglyphs are not used quite the same way that letters in the English alphabet are. For example, the name of a famous king, Ramesses, means "the sun god, Re, caused his birth."
Sometimes, Ancient Egyptian names were actually short sentences that expressed their parents' hopes for their new child, or their gratitude to the gods for a safe and healthy birth.
EGYPTIAN GLYPHS HOW TO
Most ordinary people didn't know how to read or write, though they might be able to read and write their own names, or recognize the names of their kings, which were surrounded by a loop that we call a cartouche. For most of that time, a scribe would have to learn about 500 signs in order to be able to read and write well. For over 5,000 years, people in Egypt used hieroglyphs to write their language.