Question 1: Which direction is Egyptian written in?
- Left-to-right
- Right-to-left
- Either left-to-right or right-to-left
Answer 1
Either left-to-right or right-to-left.
Bonus part 2: How do you know which way to read a given piece of text? Give a short answer.
Bonus Answer
Find the recognizable figures of birds, animals, or people. Read towards them, confronting them face-to-face.
Another way to say it: The figures are facing towards the beginning of the text. Start reading there.
Question 2: Can you see a cartouche in any of these texts? If so, where?
Answer 2
The first image has a cartouche in the right-hand column, at the top, in front of the queen’s crown. It is the rounded rectangle with a yellow background.
The second image has two cartouches, which contain the same glyphs as each other. They are in the second and fourth columns (counted in either direction).
There is no cartouche in the third image.
Origins of these glyphs: Queen Nefertari from her tomb (QV66); burial chamber of Tutankhamun (KV62); stele of Minnakht in the Louvre.
Question 3: What are cartouches used for?
- Recording the date the text was written
- Enclosing the names of royalty
- Used as magical “containment” for glyphs that would be dangerous if uncontained
- Chapter titles or section headings
Answer 3
Enclosing the names of royalty.
Question 4: How would you arrange these short texts into quadrats?
- 𓊪𓂋𓇋𓆵𓈅𓏤
- 𓅓𓂟𓎡
- 𓄟𓋴𓅱𓏏𓇳𓏤𓀭
Answer 4
Question 5: Here are three columns of text from the tomb of Queen Nefertari (tomb QV66). Write down the order in which the glyphs should be read. (Note that you can see a god’s shoulder at bottom right, and the top portion of his staff, in green, at bottom left. These are part of the illustration and are not glyphs.)
Answer 5
