Writing Egyptian

The beautifully-detailed pictorial glyphs from the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Senwosret I at Thebes, depicted above, are what most people think of as hieroglyphs. In reality, the ancient Egyptian scribes and sculptors employed a wide range of styles in their work. The highly representational glyphs above are perhaps the acme of the art, and were reserved for the most formal uses, such as monuments. An example of decorated glyphs is shown on the right, a section from the 12th Dynasty coffin of General Sep. More common on stelae and tomb walls is a plainer style in sunk relief like the one shown below: We can trace a whole spectrum of styles of hieroglyphic writing, from highly pictorial to progressively more abstract, until we come to a style so far removed from the pictorial that we give it an entirely new name, hieratic: Falling somewhere in the middle are cursive hieroglyphs. It is less stylized than hieratic, while borrowing some elements from it. Most of its glyphs are easily recognized if you are familiar with the formal style, which is not the case with many hieratic forms. It was used primarily in religious texts. I mention all this because these different styles solved a problem for me. As soon as I began to study Ancient Egyptian, I ran into the problem of handwriting. I am an indifferent artist, and my handwriting in English isn't all that good, so my attempts to reproduce the glyphs I saw in my textbooks were fairly disasterous, especially glyphs depicting living creatures. Often, I couldn't tell what I had written, upon going back to it.      I happened to acquire a copy of the Book of the Dead in the Budge facsimile version. This text dates from the late Middle-early New Kingdom period, and is written in cursive hieroglyphs (see the example on the right). I couldn't read the text, but I enjoyed studying the images, and eventually it occured to me that the hand used in the text could be an excellent guide to my own handwriting.      I realized that attempting to reproduce the glyphs as I found them in my textbooks was a mistake. These glyphs are typographic forms based on the monumental hieroglyphic style. It made no more sense for me to try to emulate them than it does to try to teach a child to write in Roman capitals. We teach children a form of English letters suited to production by hand. Why couldn't I try something similar with Egyptian? What better model, I thought, than a form developed by the ancient scribes who worked with these letters every day?      So I took my facsimile copy, and cross-referenced it with Budge's transliterated and typeset version. This was great fun. I immediately noticed that the style of handwriting is not consistent within the BoD. I can recognize the work of at least four different scribes, one of whom writes in very thin, spindly lines, and one of whom writes in thick brush strokes. One of the scribes gets downright sloppy at times. The glyphs at the very beginning of the scroll are more pictorial than those farther in. Did they only unroll the first few chapters when showing it to prospective buyers, I wonder? This particular copy of the BoD was purchased by a scribe named Ani (), and the same hand has filled his name into all the blank spaces left for it in the text. See if you can pick his name out in the text on the right. Notice that "Ani" was written by a different hand than wrote the rest of the column.      The forms of the glyphs themselves are fascinating. Some of them are little different from the monumental style: h,   aA,   mn Others are more stylized but still recognizable: d,   tA,   wn Many were a complete surprise: p,   g,   sDm I especially like the way the scribes have extracted the essential features of the glyphs, producing shapes that are simple to draw, yet which remain clearly distinguished from each other. I love the economy with which they drew many of the bird shapes, for example: Selecting the "thick brush" scribe as my exemplar, I was able to isolate examples of all the major glyphs. By photocopying, cutting and pasting, I made myself a set of practice sheets. I've been using this style of writing for some time now, and the results, for me, are excellent. The glyphs are easy to produce, and my handwriting looks pretty good. I didn't want to just store my practice sheets away, so I decided to scan them and make them available for others. You can click the links below to view the practice sheets, or download the accompanying ZIP file.      The sheets and the handwritten glyphs are oriented right-to-left, like the BoD originals, but I practice writing them in both directions, once I've got the basic form down. I find that using a fine-tipped marking pen on regular typing paper produces a line remarkably similar to the brush work of the ancient scribes!

BoD Sheet 1 BoD Sheet 2 BoD Sheet 3 BoD Sheet 4 BoD Sheet 5

BoD Sheet 6 BoD Sheet 7 BoD Sheet 8 BoD Sheet 9 All sheets (180K)

© 2000, Terrence Donnelly