Hieroglyphics index

Hieroglyphic alphabet

 

Biliteral signs


Triliteral signs

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The Amduat: The ancient Egyptian book of the underworld

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Imi dw3t, means the book of what is in the Duat "Netherworld". It also means the book of the hidden chamber. It was an important funerary text of the New Kingdom of Egypt. It tells the journey of the sun god Re through the Netherworld. It is often believed that the king takes the same journey and becomes one with Re in eternal life. The Amduat is divided into twelve hours according to the twelve hours of the night: it begins when the sun sets in the west and rises again in the east. The boat of the sun god faces many obstacles and the journey becomes a drama. The earliest complete copies of the Amduat are retrieved from the tomb of Thutmose the Third. The hours of the Amduat The first hour: the sun god enters into the Netherworld "the gate which swallows all" represented as ram-headed Ba. It describes the Netherworld's inhabitants and there's  a list of 741 deities in the burial chamber. The second and third hour: it describes the  fertile farmlands of the...
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The Ka and the Ba

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Understanding the pivotal concepts of Egyptian identity is a necessity to understand hieroglyphic writing. The Ka and the Ba are among the most important and complex hieroglyphic ideograms. "Ka" is a concept deeply rooted in the Ancient Egyptian Persona. In the simplest terms, it is the idea that each one of us has a soul consort mirroring our own souls, our spiritual double. This double takes after our own bodies "ghet" for it can only materialise with it to form us as a whole. This consort lives on even after our own death. Offerings to the Ka were a necessity since, like the person's physical body, the Ka needed nourishment. The idea is a bit similar to the Qareen in Islamic religion, however the nature of the Ka remains much more ambiguous. The phonetic biliteral sign with the predominant ideogram of the Ka represents the breast and outstretched arms of a person pictorially. Ka can also mean personality, individuality and even a man's fortune or his posi...
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N and mu

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The equivalent hieroglyphic alphabet of the letter N is represented by the pictorial surface or ripple of water. "en" can mean "of" "to" or "for" where it can be seen joining long texts as an important preposition. Very rarely used as an ideogram (Gardiner refers to the absence of an ideogram altogether), it should mean water or the surface of water. The letter is more commonly used as a phonetic complement rather than an ideogram, to guide the pronunciation of other hieroglyphs in many instances.  A similar sign with the phonetic value of mu will also have the same pictorial representation but with three repeated ripples instead. The ideograph of a water surface is no longer valid here and we will either be referring to a whole body of water or a watery mass of the sky. This symbol can be seen frequently as a determinative such as at the end of "itrw" (river) where it does not have any phonetic value but is only there to signify water....
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