Question 1: What are the three categories that, in general, hieroglyphs can be used for? Give their name and general meaning.
Answer 1
- Phonograms, representing sounds
- Determinatives, clarifying the meaning of words, or distinguishing them from similar words
- Ideograms, in which the glyph stands for a single concept by itself, usually the object depicted.
Question 2: What is the visual indicator that a glyph is an ideogram?
Answer 2
A glyph is an ideogram if it is followed by hieroglyph Z1 (drawn as ๐ค ), a single stroke, very informally referred to as a “tally mark”.
Question 3: When used as an ideogram, does the glyph ๐ mean what it depicts, which is a man with a weapon? If not, what does it signify, and how do we justify an ideogram not meaning what it literally depicts?
Answer 3
No. It represents the idea of strength or force.
The “excuse” for it not being literally a man with a weapon, is that strength and force are abstract things that cannot be drawn themselves, so we use something that will strongly (pun very much not intended) suggest those things but which can be drawn.
Question 4: How many determinatives are in the word ๐๐๐ฐ๐๐? If there are any, list it or them.
Answer 4
Two. The horned viper, and the seated man. The horned viper is usually the uniliteral f, but in this case, it’s being used as a determinative (for reasons which are not certain).
Question 5: What principle does the answer for the previous question demonstrate?
Answer 5
It demonstrates that a hieroglyph can be used, in different contexts, for more than one of the three possible uses of a glyph.