Hieroglyphs: A Very Short Introduction by Penelope Wilson

Author:Penelope Wilson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

into’ the sign. They are the writings for pr ‘to go out’ and aq

‘enter’.

The sign of the man holding the hippopotamus by the tail is

used in the writing of the word for lapis lazuli and so has the reading xsdb, though this in itself is a later version of the word xsbd from Dynasty 18. The writing is a punning sign-play, studied in 1876 by W. Goodwin. He suggested that here the man is performing the action xs( f ) ‘driving away’, and the object of his attention is db

‘the hippopotamus’, so the phrase xs( f ) db ‘driving away the hippopotamus’ sounded the same as or similar to the word for lapis lazuli and the signs making up this tableau were used in the writing for the substance. It is also possible that the protective powers of lapis are symbolically invoked here, so that amulets of lapis could be used to drive away danger and evil, here represented by the hippopotamus.

phs

The possibilities for such games with signs and sound values mean ogly

that sportive texts occur quite often, particularly in ‘religious’ or Hier

‘funerary’ texts as early as the Old Kingdom, and they are not confined to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. It has been said that the priests of these times wished to make the Egyptian texts for which they were responsible more difficult for others to read and to try to hide the ‘truths’ which they contained. As the texts could only ever have been read by a small group of people and as the ruling Greek administrators would have been excluded from reading any hieroglyphs anyway this seems to be a specious argument. In fact, the mythological texts, the temple unguent and perfume recipes, the list of library books, and in particular the ritual texts are not written in especially ‘cryptic’ hieroglyphs at all.

The cryptic texts are those very much in prominent places, such as on window frames or architraves – high up, addressing the gods, and almost on show for all to marvel at the intricacies of the script and the erudition of the language. They consist of descriptions, basic acts of ritual, and nothing particularly secret. The cryptic texts rely upon double meanings of signs or signs which represent 64

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