- The Egyptian “alphabet”
- Vowels and pronunciation
- Articles
- Summary
- Vocabulary
- Exercises
- Sidebar: Reconstructing Egyptian pronunciation
Transliteration is the process of writing a text in a different writing system than the one in which it was originally written. We transliterate hieroglyphs into a modified Latin alphabet to make it a bit easier for us to read and translate them.
If you’ve ever seen an Egyptian name or word like “Senwosret” or “ankh” written in our familiar alphabet, that’s transliteration. Those are written in a sort of “popular” transliteration, pronounceable by most people literate in English. But for the purposes of recording the sounds of Egyptian more accurately, Egyptologists use a more precise and scholarly transliteration system.
The Egyptian “alphabet”
Hieroglyphs are not a truly alphabetic writing system (hence the quotation marks), but the term is good enough for most purposes.
The following table shows all the uniliteral hieroglyphs. Each of these, as the name suggests, represents one of the written sounds of Egyptian, of which there are about 24. We will soon meet hieroglyphs which can represent a combination of two sounds (biliterals) or even three sounds (triliterals).
The second column shows the transliteration symbols. Different Egyptologists use several different systems for this, so some of the symbols will differ from one source to another. I am using the so-called “European” system (used by James P. Allen in his textbook Middle Egyptian), but the “British” or “Anglo-American” system is also widely used. Below this table, I will highlight the few cases where they differ.
The third column tells you what the object depicted by the glyph is, as well as the description of its sound in Middle Egyptian, plus its “conventional” Egyptological pronunciation where that differs. Conventional pronunciation is explained later in this lesson.
| Glyph | Translit. | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| πΏ | κ’ | Egyptian vulture. May have been an “r” or “l” sound, but conventionally ah. |
| π | j | Flowering reed. Shows that a notable vowel was present. Usually at the beginning or middle of words. Conventionally as i in “machine” or y in “yet”. |
| π | y | Two flowering reeds. y in “yet”. Conventionally as that, or i in “machine”. |
| π | κ€ | Forearm. Possibly a “throat-closing” sound at the back of the throat. Conventionally ah. |
| π ± | w | Quail chick. w in “wet”; also, when at the end of a word, could show the presence of a vowel. Conventionally w before vowels, or oo between other consonants or at end of words. |
| π | b | Foot. As b in English. |
| πͺ | p | Stool. As p in English. |
| π | f | Horned viper. As f in English. |
| π | m | Owl. As m in English. |
| π | n | Water. As n in English. |
| π | r | Mouth. Probably a tap or flapped r like in Japanese, or Spanish “pero”. |
| π | h | Reed shelter. As h in English. |
| π | αΈ₯ (H with dot below) | Wick. Emphatic “h” like breathing on eyeglasses to clean them. |
| π | αΈ« (H with breve below) | Unknown object. ch as in “chutzpah” or “Bach”. |
| π‘ | αΊ (H with line below) | Belly and tail of mammal. Like αΈ« with a y at the end; a bit like the beginning of English “hue” but with the “Bach” sound. |
| π | z | Doorbolt. Originally probably English th in “think”; became more like “s” in Middle Egyptian. |
| π΄ | s | Folded cloth. As s in English. |
| π | Ε‘ (S with hΓ‘Δek) | Pool. As sh in “shirt”. |
| π | q | Hillside. Like Arabic “q”: an English “k” but pronounced at the back of the throat |
| π‘ | k | Basket with handle. As k in English. |
| πΌ | g | Jar stand. Hard g as in “get”, not as in “gem”. |
| π | t | Loaf of bread. As t in English. |
| πΏ | αΉ― (T with line below) | Hobble for livestock. t with a y after, like the beginning of the British pronunciation of “tune”, a bit like ch in “church”. |
| π§ | d | Hand. As d in English. |
| π | αΈ (D with line below) | Snake. d with a y after, like the beginning of the British pronunciation of “dune”, a bit like j in “jump”. |
The transliteration symbols which appear in the fewest fonts are those for πΏ and π, which are officially called “Egyptological Alef” (or “Aleph”) and “Egyptological Ayin”, respectively. They come from symbols used by scholars of the Semitic languages. In a pinch you could use the numeral “3” in place of κ’, and a smart quote, or even just an apostrophe, for κ€.
If you want to know more about how we reconstruct what the vowels were (and for that matter, what the consonants sounded like), see the Sidebar below.
Alphabetic order
If the Egyptians had an alphabetical order for their sounds, we do not know what it was. The order seen here was established by Egyptologists in the 1800s. Itβs helpful to learn it if you need to use good old paper books (I do!) but do not worry about it for now. You will learn it with practice.
Alternative uniliterals
For a few sounds, an alternative glyph existed during the course of Egyptian history, which can be used instead. These are:
| Sound | Normal | Alternative | Depicts |
|---|---|---|---|
| w | π ± | π² | Coil of rope |
| m | π | π | Unknown object |
| n | π | π | Red Crown of Lower Egypt |
| g | πΌ | π€ | Linen bag |
The glyph for k, the “basket with handle” π‘, is occasionally written with the handle facing the other direction: π’
Vowels and pronunciation
The Egyptians did not really write their vowels, so the alphabet contains none. Two glyphs, however, could sometimes be “placeholders” for them: The glyph π j could show a vowel at the beginning of a word, or in the middle of a word if two vowels met, or sometimes at the end of a word, particularly for the vowel “ee”. And π ± w could show a vowel at the end of the word. Presumably vowels which had these placeholders were more “important” for comprehension than others which were not indicated.
Since we don’t (reliably) have the vowels, Egyptologists have adopted a sort of “conventional” pronunciation scheme, mostly by putting a short vowel like “e” between consonants as necessary to make the words pronounceable, and by pronouncing a few of the odd glyphs at the beginning of the alphabet (κ’, j, y, κ€, w) as vowels.
For example, a coherent Egyptian sentence might be transliterated sαΈm j nbt αΈ₯wt. An Egyptologist might pronounce this as “sedge-em ee nebet hawet”, or the last word might be pronounced “hoot”. jw f m pr κ€κ’ might be “yew eff em per ah-ah.” bjn wj n j might be pronounced “been wee en ee”, or perhaps “bee in wee en ee”. But none of those are what the original Egyptian sounded like for those phrases. It should always be understood that this is a modern convention to let us talk about Egyptian, and is not how the original language sounded.
British transliteration system differences
- κ½ (i with comma instead of a dot, called “glottal I”) is used instead of j. Even fewer fonts support this symbol than support κ’ and κ€.
- αΈ³ (K with dot below) is used instead of q.
- z and s are written as s and Ε (S with an acute accent), respectively. During the Middle Kingdom, the sound we label z merged with that we label s, which explains the disagreement. Sometimes users of the British system just use s for both.
Articles
Middle Egyptian did not have articles, that is, words we would translate as “the” or “a(n)”. In Late Egyptian, articles did develop, and we will learn about them later, but for now, if you see a word translated “cow”, then “the cow” and “a cow” might also be good translations for it; whatever is needed to make the translation more readable. When translating English into Egyptian, likewise, you will just omit those words.
Summary: The “Alphabet”
- There are 24 different sounds in the Egyptian “alphabet”.
- Egyptologists have a few different systems for transliterating those sounds into the Latin alphabet.
- Vowels are not directly written in hieroglyphs. However, a few consonant signs tell us something about the vowels under certain circumstances.
- Egyptologists have a sort of conventional way of pronouncing Egyptian to each other, which probably sounds very different from how it was actually pronounced.
- Middle Egyptian did not have the articles “the” or “a(n)”, so we can supply them in our translations as needed for readability.
Vocabulary
These words are written only with alphabetic signs:
- ππ jm “there, therein, therefrom”
- ππ ± bw “place, location”
- πͺπ°ππ ptαΈ₯ Ptah (creator god in Memphis, god of artisans)
- ππ°π rn “name”
These next few words are only written with alphabetic signs, but they are prepositions, which are usually very tricky to translate from one language to another. For example, not every use of the English word “from” can be translated von in German, and vice versa.
- π m “in”, “from”; “by means of/with” (an instrument or device)
- π n “for (the benefit of)”; “to” (about giving something to someone)
- π r “regarding”, “with respect to”; “towards” (a place or thing)
- πππ°π αΈ₯nκ€ “with, together with”
In the exercises for this lesson, none of those prepositions will be used in any way other than the meanings listed here, but that will not be the case for long. We will soon be learning other meanings for these words, and how those meanings do not neatly line up with English.
And in these last few words, there is a final glyph which is not among the alphabetic glyphs you see above; we will learn about those glyphs in the next lesson. For now, just write them as part of the word which is not pronounced.
- πͺπ±ππ°π― pt “sky”
- The extra glyph depicts a canopy, supported at the corners, representing the sky itself.
- ππ°ππ³ rκ€ “sun”
- The extra glyph depicts the sun.
- ππ±ππ°π αΈ«t “thing, item of property”
- The extra glyph depicts a rolled-up papyrus scroll.
- π§π°πͺπ±ππ dpt “boat”
- The extra glyph depicts a boat.
Exercises
Click here to do the exercises for Lesson 3.
Sidebar: Reconstructing Egyptian pronunciation
We can’t be certain what Egyptian sounded like, especially its vowels. But Egyptologists and linguists have some pretty good ideas, thanks to reconstructions from two main sources:
- One major source is Coptic, which is the last form of spoken Egyptian. (If you read the Sidebar for lesson 1, this will be familiar.) This language is still used today by Coptic Orthodox Christians as a liturgical language (like Latin is traditionally used by Roman Catholic Christians). And fortunately, when Egyptian reached the Coptic stage, it was being written using an alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet, which does include the vowels.
- Another source consists of Egyptian names, when we find them written in other languages. For example, the Hittites’ script included vowels, and the Hittites had a lot of diplomatic dealings with the Egyptians. So we can find the names of some important Egyptians (mainly pharaohs) in Hittite archives. When we compare those to the Egyptian form of the names, we then have a clue as to how the vowels sounded.
If you’re interested in learning more about what the reconstructions sound like, and some of the arguments for them, I recommend James P. Allen, Ancient Egyptian Phonology, Cambridge University Press, 2020.