Notes for Hieroglyphs
Kinds of Hieroglyph characters...
Individual Hieroglyph characters are mostly phonetic, i.e. indicating a sound as our alphabet does. An example of a phonetic symbol is the Owl (the picture middle of the third row from the top) which is ‘m’. There are also symbols that portray the object, that are placed at the end of words spelt phonetically, in order to clarify the meaning of the word. For example the hieroglyth at bottom right indicates ‘bee’, and that at top left is ‘bird’. These are known as determinitives. Thirdly there are hieroglyph symbols that stand for whole words, called logograms. For example the hieroglyph second row middle stands for ‘Horus’, a God. Sometimes the same symbol can be either phonetic, a logogram or determinitive, depending on context and accompanying symbols.
(Reference: Pocket Guide to Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Richard Parkinson)
Individual Hieroglyph characters are mostly phonetic, i.e. indicating a sound as our alphabet does. An example of a phonetic symbol is the Owl (the picture middle of the third row from the top) which is ‘m’. There are also symbols that portray the object, that are placed at the end of words spelt phonetically, in order to clarify the meaning of the word. For example the hieroglyth at bottom right indicates ‘bee’, and that at top left is ‘bird’. These are known as determinitives. Thirdly there are hieroglyph symbols that stand for whole words, called logograms. For example the hieroglyph second row middle stands for ‘Horus’, a God. Sometimes the same symbol can be either phonetic, a logogram or determinitive, depending on context and accompanying symbols.
(Reference: Pocket Guide to Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Richard Parkinson)