Over the past year, I’ve learned phrases from a few different languages, including Irish, Japanese, and Elvish. Today I was reaching back in time to try my hand at an Ancient language style, and looked at some hieroglyphics.
Hieroglyphics are one of the earliest forms of writing style, using pictograms to represent letters, sounds, and even words. The language was made up of around 900 different symbols and was used for nearly 4000 years. 4000 years! I can’t even wrap my brain around that length of time. Incredible. The hieroglyphics were unable to be read for 1500 years until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a tablet written in hieroglyphs, Greek, and Demotic in 1799, and the subsequent translation by Jean-François Champollio in 1822. I found all of this so interesting that I could have just spent the whole day learning about Ancient Egypt and been quite happy, but I decided to see if I could put the hieroglyphics into action, and try and write my name.
As there was no hieroglyph for the letter ‘E’ I thought writing my name, Hannah, would be the easiest option.
This new thing was way more interesting than I first thought it would be, and led me down many different rabbit holes trying to find more information. I wish I’d learned a bit more about Ancient Egypt in school, but I’m definitely inspired to delve deeper now. Next stop, Cleopatra’s beauty secrets?
New Day, New Thing 