hieroglyphics refer to the purely graphic use of words, which are similar in shape to what they represent. Generally speaking, hieroglyphics are the earliest characters. Use lines or strokes of words to outline the shape characteristics of the object to be expressed.
Pictographic characters come from pictures and characters, which is the most primitive method of word-making. The picture nature is weakened and the symbolic nature is enhanced. Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian languages, ancient Indian languages, and China's Oracle Bone Inscriptions and stone inscriptions are all independently produced from the simplest pictures and patterns in primitive society.
The pictographic character "Moon" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, China is like the shape of a curved moon, and the character "Turtle" (especially the traditional [Turtle]) is like the side shape of a turtle. The character "Horse" is a horse with four legs, and "Fish" is a swimming fish with a fish head, a fish body and a fish tail. The word "wine" without three drops of water is unitary, just like a wine bottle without wine, while the word "day" is like a circle with a little in the middle, much like the shape people see when looking directly at the sun.
It is worth mentioning that the original characters in China belong to hieroglyphics. Although Chinese characters still retain the characteristics of hieroglyphics, after thousands of years of evolution, they are far from the original image, so they do not belong to hieroglyphics, but belong to morpheme characters with ideographic system. In addition, the "head font" and "geometry" of Mayan characters are also.
limitations
because some physical things and abstract things can't be drawn, they have great limitations. Therefore, on the basis of pictographic characters, Chinese characters developed into logogram, and other word-making methods were added, such as knowing, referring to things, pictophonetic sounds, transferring notes and borrowing. However, these new word-making methods still need to be based on the original pictographs, and they are based on pictographs, and they are formed by splicing, omitting or adding or deleting symbolic symbols.
regionality
hieroglyphics in various countries (regions)
hieroglyphics are all developed from primitive pictures. Although the primitive rock paintings in ancient Egypt are not as old as those in Europe, they have been circulated for a long time than those in Oceania, with a time of more than 1, years, making them one of the longest-lasting rock paintings in the world. According to the differences in style and art, color of stone scale, animal species, costumes and weapons, it can be divided into four periods:
***19 hieroglyphic living fossils in Dongba
(1) the ancient buffalo period (about 9 BC-35 BC).
(2) Cattle herding period (about 35 BC-15 BC).
(3) Ma period (about 15 BC to the 2nd century AD).
(4) Camel period (starting from the 2nd century). African Sahara rock paintings, located in the Alger Plateau in the middle of Sahara, not far from the border between Algeria and Libya, are recognized by scholars all over the world as "the largest prehistoric art museum in the world".
The hieroglyphics of ancient India also originated from the development of pictures, and were mainly distributed in the hilly areas of India's central Avandia Mountains. The oldest rock paintings can be traced back to the late Paleolithic period 2, years ago. According to the style, rock paintings of india can be roughly divided into: naturalistic rock paintings, mainly depicting individual wild animals, with simple and realistic shapes. Stylized rock paintings began to extract lines from color blocks, and outlined the outlines of people and animals with simple and heavy lines. Or it is a combination of silhouette flat painting and thick line shallow drawing. Animals are more realistic, while characters are patterned and geometric. Eclectic rock paintings, mostly depicting horse riding, elephant riding or walking, and metal use.
dawenkou culture is one of the important remains in the late Neolithic period, named after it was first discovered in dawenkou site, Taian county, Shandong province. Its distribution ranges from Bohai Sea in the north, Jiangsu and Anhui in the south and Henan in the west. It started in 43 BC and developed into Longshan culture in Shandong around 25 BC. The pottery features of Dawenkou culture are obvious, and the custom of tooth extraction in adolescence prevails among residents, which is the birthplace of ancient ancestors' tooth extraction custom in the southeast coast of China. The social economy of Dawenkou culture has developed to a higher level. Many carved symbols that have been found are considered as the precursors of hieroglyphics. Judging from the animal bones and the patterns on pottery and stone tools unearthed later, half-image pictures and pattern symbols appeared in China thousands of years ago.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions
According to linguists' research, a large number of "Oracle Bone Inscriptions" unearthed in modern China were widely and maturely used in Shang Dynasty (from 18 BC to 12 BC). During this period, China's pottery production, bedroom construction, mural art, silk weaving production, etc., were invented and used by various advanced cultures.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions, also known as Qiwen, Tortoise Shell or Tortoise Shell Bone, is a very important ancient Chinese character material. There are more than 4, different characters and figures in the total of more than 1, pieces of Oracle bones with characters, of which about 2,5 characters have been recognized.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions has about 27% pictophonetic characters, which shows that Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a fairly mature writing system. According to Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Yin Shang Dynasty, Chinese characters at that time had developed into a writing system that could completely record Chinese. In the discovered Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Yin Ruins, the number of words has reached about 4,. Among them, there are a large number of signifiers, pictographs, knowing characters, and many pictographs. These characters are very different from the characters we use today in appearance. However, judging from the word formation method, the two are basically the same.
It is recognized by international linguists that the language recorded by Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty belongs to old chinese, not the ancient or primitive languages of other language families. In his book The Essence and History of Chinese, the Swedish sinologist Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren studied Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Yin Shang in detail, and proved that Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Yin Shang was an early form of Sino-Tibetan Chinese family, not an early form of other languages, based on the fact that Oracle Bone Inscriptions had the same word "Mai" and "Kou" and "ku".
Experts have found that the inscriptions on Jia Hu of Pei Ligang culture in Henan province 8, years ago are strikingly similar to those on Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins 4, or 5, years later. First, the writing tools are the same, and they all use sharp tools to engrave symbols on tortoise shells and bones. Second, it has the same function. In Shang Dynasty, Oracle Bone Inscriptions was used to record the divination content, and Jia Hu's engraving was also related to divination. Third, the principle of word-making is the same. Jia Hu's inscription is a symbol of reason, while Oracle Bone Inscriptions has many words of reason. Experts believe that "the discovery of Jia Hu inscriptions provides reliable evidence for exploring the historical source of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty". Like later Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions and modern Chinese characters, Jia Hu's inscriptions have three structural levels in terms of writing characteristics, while Jia Hu's inscriptions are the same as those of Shang Dynasty's Oracle Bone Inscriptions, because they are also engraved on hard Oracle bones and other objects, with vigorous strokes and sharp bends.
ancient Egyptian characters
hieroglyphics in Egypt
The hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt developed through pictures and patterns tens of thousands of years ago, and a systematic hieroglyphics-holy script characters were produced around 4 BC (6 years ago). Like Sumerian, ancient Hindi and Oracle Bone Inscriptions in China, it was independently produced from the simplest pictures and patterns in primitive society. However, this kind of writing was only a pictograph at first, and then it developed into hieroglyphics-composed of three symbols: ideographic, phonetic and radical. Ideographic symbols are concepts or definitions that use pictures to represent something. But ideographic symbols can't express the pronunciation of words, so the ancient Egyptians invented phonetic symbols. Phonetic symbols are also some figures, which * * * have 24 consonants, and on this basis, they form a large number of gemini and trisyllabic. For example, the mouth is monosyllabic, pronouncing "Y", the swallow is disyllabic, pronouncing "Wr", the beetle is trisyllabic, pronouncing "hpr", etc., but these pronunciations all mean more than one meaning. In order to distinguish them, ancient Egyptians invented radical symbols. The function of this radical symbol is mainly to distinguish different categories of symbols, similar to radicals in Chinese characters. Most Egyptian characters have radical symbols. This kind of writing is often engraved on temple walls, religious monuments and paper grass, and its main users are monks and scribes. Egyptian hieroglyphics had an important influence on later alphabets.
In different stages of ancient Egyptian history, Egyptian hieroglyphics changed many times with the needs of social life. Priests appeared in the Middle Kingdom, folk script appeared in Egypt in the later period, and Coptic characters (Egyptian characters written in reformed Greek letters) appeared during Roman rule. Due to various historical reasons, ancient Egyptian characters failed to develop into alphabetic characters. However, ancient Egyptian characters had an important influence on the formation of Phoenician letters. Around 15 ~ 1 BC, the Phoenicians who rose on the east coast of the Mediterranean traded with the Egyptians. At this time, the learned Phoenician monks rewritten simple hieroglyphs into orderly letters to help them trade.
Due to the complexity of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, with the demise of ancient Egypt, this kind of writing gradually became dead languages and was completely forgotten by people. It is precisely because of the discovery of Rosetta Stone and champollion's successful interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics that all the history of ancient Egypt is presented to us.
Font
There are three fonts for the sacred script: inscriptions, monks and the masses. At first, the inscription was elegant and popular, and later it became a solemn font carved on pyramids and temple walls, as well as painted on stone tools and pottery. At the same time, it is also the general name of three fonts. Its symbols look like pictures, but in fact most of them have long lost their pictographic function. The inscription is a decorative body, and the monk is a practical cursive body, which is mainly used for religious scriptures. The internal structure of these two fonts is exactly the same. Popular style, also known as epistolary style or vernacular style, is a simplified form of monk style.
Discovery
In p>1799, when Napoleon led an expedition to Egypt, Bouchard, one of his officers, led his soldiers to build fortifications near Rosetta, and found a black basalt tablet. The tablet is engraved with the same inscription in two languages and three fonts. The hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt are used at the top, the cursive hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt (also called folk script) are in the middle, and the Greek characters are below. This is the famous stone tablet that was later called "Rosetta Monument" by the world.
Egyptian hieroglyphics (left)
If you really want to understand the culture and history of ancient Egypt, you must understand Egyptian hieroglyphics. Therefore, the news of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone immediately attracted the attention of scholars from all over the world after it was published in the then Egyptian Newsletter. They have tried to decipher the words on the tablet. The Greek on the tablet was quickly read. The text in the middle of the monument was soon confirmed to be the ancient Egyptian folk script. However, although scholars can understand the meaning of hieroglyphics and folk scripts with the help of Greek on the tablet, they still have not solved the mystery of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. Surprisingly, champollion, an 11-year-old French teenager, is determined to uncover the secrets of ancient Egyptian characters on the Rosetta Stone, let the tablet speak and tell people the secrets of ancient Egypt. He worked hard for 21 years to read Egyptian hieroglyphics. Champollion found that when the ancient Egyptians wrote the king's name, they always added a box or drew a thick line under the name. There are also words framed by lines on the Rosetta Stone. Is it the name of the king? After continuous exploration, champollion finally understood the two hieroglyphics of Egyptian King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra, which can be spelled from right to left, from left to right, or from top to bottom. Champollion was convinced that the graphic symbols in hieroglyphics, on the whole, represent the consonant symbols of pronunciation. Through hard work, in 1822, the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics, which has been puzzling for more than 1, years, was finally solved by champollion.
It turns out that the inscription on the Rosetta Monument was written by monks in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC, to the king at that time. This king is Ptolemy, the Pharaoh of the 15th dynasty. Shortly after he ascended the king's throne, he cancelled the taxes owed by the monks, opened up new financial resources for the temple, and took special protection measures for the temple, which brought a series of benefits to the monks, so he quickly won the respect of the monks. So the monks wrote this letter of gratitude and carved it on this black basalt tablet in two words written in three fonts.
The small city of Rosetta is famous all over the world because of this stele which can solve the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, this famous stele is no longer in the city, and it has been collected in the British Museum in London.
Due to the complexity of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, with the demise of ancient Egypt, this kind of writing gradually became dead languages and was completely forgotten by people. It is precisely because of the discovery of Rosetta Stone and champollion's successful interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics that all the history of ancient Egypt is presented to us.
cuneiform
cuneiform in the two river basins
It was developed by Sumerians in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins around 32 BC. In its 3-year history, cuneiform characters were gradually simplified and abstracted from the original hieroglyphic system and glyph structure, and the number of characters decreased from about 1 in the early Bronze Age to about 4 in the late Bronze Age. Most of the cuneiform characters that have been found are written on clay tablets, and a few are written on stone, metal or wax tablets. Booksellers use sharpened reed poles or wooden sticks to write on the clay board, which becomes hard and not easy to deform after drying or baking.
cuneiform is used by many ancient civilizations to write their languages, but these languages do not necessarily belong to the same related language family. For example, the Hittites and the Persian Empire also use cuneiform, but these two languages are Indo-European languages unrelated to Soviet American languages. In addition, Akkadian people also use cuneiform as a writing tool, but Akkadian and Sumerian are quite different. Because most of them are portrayed on clay tablets, the lines are straight and wedge-shaped, and reed poles or wooden sticks are used to imprint on the clay tablets to facilitate writing. Therefore, most of the characters and strokes are triangular lines, and the glyphs are gradually fixed as syllabic symbols from changeable hieroglyphs with the evolution of civilization.
the origin of Mayan characters
Mayan characters first appeared around the BC, but the first stone tablet with a date was unearthed in 292 BC and was found in Tikal. Since then, Mayan characters have only spread in a small area centered on Beden and Tikal. In the middle of the fifth century, Mayan characters spread to the whole Maya region, and the commercial transaction route was established at that time, and Mayan characters spread to all parts of the country along this route. It is the only nation in America that has left a written record. In the early days of AD, they created hieroglyphics, which were one of the five earliest scripts in the world.
Mayan characters are very wonderful. They have pictographs, meanings and sounds, and they are a kind of characters with the functions of intentional form and meaning sound. It's a combination of hieroglyphics and sounds, Maya sculpture.