The first attempts
made by the ancient Egyptians to transcribe their language date back to
the end of the 4th millennium B.C., when the first united
kingdom in the
Nile
valley was established.
At that time hieroglyphic writing was characterised by a pictographic
relation between the concept to communicate and the sign chosen to utter
it.
That is to say, every word corresponded to a sign. An almost classic
example of such a system of communication is provided by the well-known
Narmer Palette
Duly considering the relationships
between the different signs and reading them from high to low, the
meaning of the message gets clear:
THE
PHARAOH CONQUERS THE PEOPLE OF THE DELTA.
This example shows one
of the typical elements of hieroglyphic writing, that is, the presence
of signs corresponding to words. Such signs, called ideograms,
correspond to the object that they faithfully represent or to a concept
they are closely connected to. Only within a certain context the correct
interpretation can be determined.
Transcription
ra
(conventional pronunciation
RA),
and it means "the sun"
(represented object); by adding a vertical hyphen it can be transcribed
like hrw
(conventional pronunciation
HERU )
and it means “the day”
(connected concept)
 The
transcription is z3,
and with a hyphen (conventional pronunciation
ZA) it
means "goose"
(represented object); with no hyphen the transcription is however
z3, but
the meaning is "son".
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