How to Read Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs

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Join us as we delve into the captivating journey of the Ancient Egyptian language, including its evolution from mesmerizing hieroglyphs to the practical Demotic and the eventual transition to Coptic using the Greek alphabet. We'll explore pivotal historical moments like the Roman Empire's influence, the ascent of Christianity, and the vital role of the Rosetta Stone in deciphering hieroglyphs. We'll also learn about the complexities of Ancient Egyptian writing, the dual nature of hieroglyphs as logograms and phonograms, and the challenges of decipherment.

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0:00 - The History of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs
4:05 - Speakly
5:03 - The Rosetta Stone & Decipherment
7:13 - How to Actually Read Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs

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Further Reading:

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I love the idea of a once enthusiastic and sophisticated scribe being relegated to inscribing redundant hieroglyphics thinking "I'm a poet surrounded by idiots..."

saladmcjones
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As someone who actually learned to decipher those as part of training in Egyptology and Assyriology, this is fairly accurate, although I would add the following important information to what was said.

As stated, the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were in use for three millennia. Naturally, like every language, it was subjected to language drift. The way they were written, the rules of language, and even the vocabulary shifted in that time.

So when translating hieroglyphics, you have to understand that scholars typically don't treat them as a single language, for it would be as nonsensical as trying to match say French with Latin. Similar but different enough to cause problems.

So you separate these in Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian. Roughly, Old Egyptian is the pyramid texts (Old Kingdom). Middle Egyptian matches the apex of Egyptian culture (Middle Kingdom) coinciding with the Ramesside epoch which saw an incredibly large production of written material in hieroglyphics, and Late Egyptian pretty much what was found on the Rosetta stone and things of that era.

That still covers centuries each time. But it is already more reliable and accurate than just treating the language as singular. It evolved a lot naturally, especially with external influences.

tywinlannister
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The progression of language is always an interesting matter to consider. We often take speech and a written language for granted, but it has been key to the development of civilization and more.

isaacbarrett
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As an Egyptian Pharaoh who ruled 2 slaves and 1 palm tree at my heyday during 420 BC (and proud landowner of a 2 meter tall pyramid for 7 minutes until it was used as a nuclear testing site for the USSR), I can confirm that your video is accurate.

ISoldßinLadensViagraOnEbayఔ
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I remember at school we were assigned to read "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien (which I thought was pronounced "Irr" Tolkien because of the font used to print his name!) Anyway I was intrigued by the language printed around the end sheet papers of the book, and set out to translate them. I was delighted to find that they made sense in English! I don't think I could do it today (it's been about 60 years!) but of course now I know that Professor Tolkien's mastery was not just literature but language as well. In fact I understand that he and his brother had invented worlds and languages to play with as children!

kayerin
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This reminds me of a history class project we did at school back in the 1980's. We were all tasked with creating a mini newspaper from the perspective of Egyptions long ago. Everyone wrote articles in different scripts. It was a lot of fun creating our own hieroglyphics.

samanthahardy
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I’ve been learning this for two years, so proud to be able to read this. Now i can finally understand the emojis my egyptian friend sends me

LucaLameire
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Chinese works like this sorta with its phonosemantic compounds. 時, 侍, and 詩 for instance all mean completely different things but are pronounced similarly to 寺

someonerandom
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As an indonesian, i thank you for providing knowledge about the origins of our ancient script, which comes from Brahmi. And our ancient script are Kawi, Javanese, Lontara, old sundanese & Sundanese

nikirangga
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It's also important to note that not havings simbols for vowels was quite common in tge middle east. You can see it also in hebrew and arabic for example

איתמרהדס
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I'm Egyptian, we still use words from the ancient Egyptian language in our dialect of Arabic, the most common example is the word for woman, in Arabic its "imra'ah" but in our dialect we say "set" which means woman but in the ancient Egyptian language

erreryhj
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Just one small add on the writing sequence (from left to right (L2R) or right to left (R2L), there is also the boustrophedon way, where you alternate from one to the other each line, like a "snake". That way, it minimizes the length of your eyes reading it.

Also, Egypcians could write so that 2 texts faced the center of the temple, for aesthetic reasons.

NoisqueVoaProduction
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I’m glad I was busy for a while so now I can come back and binge multiple videos from this channel. I love the narrator and animations. They chose interesting topics as well!

vincentclark
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Reminds me of the little bit of Japanese I've studied: phonetic characters (two sets of them!) mixed with logographic kanji, which sometimes have the pronunciations written next to them if the kanji is thought to be too obscure.

zeb
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I can finally become an archeologist without college debt

XtremeNation
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Priceless 😂😂. I grew up on the backend of Empire. His wit, humour & charm takes me back.

louvendran
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~9:55 Nfr was probably pronounced something like "Nafir" in Old Egyptian and "Nafi'" in Middle Egyptian, "Nefer" is Egyptological pronunciation. Egyptological pronunciation is not meant to be accurate, it just fills in the vowel spaces with a default "e" to make it easier to read Egyptian words out-loud without knowing how they were originally said.

SomasAcademy
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I think that my knowledge of hieroglyphs has increased by an order of magnitude thanks to this video! And there i thought that Sidequest videos--which ive misses greatly--were just for fun!

rsfaeges
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One of the best videos on YouTube about the hieroglyphs.

mkka
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Another absolutely fascinating SideQuest story! Thank you, can't wait for the next one!

henkkaj