Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 12:30:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Graham <geoffrey.graham@yale.edu>
Subject: Hieroglyphic Game 1

Hello, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Enthusiasts!

Go to the AEL website to find the first installment in an activity which will be beneficial to both beginners and afficionados of the Egyptian hieroglyphic script!

The first hieroglyphic game challenges your ability to recognize hieroglyphic signs as they were carved and painted in real Egyptian tombs. This excercise will first focus on bird signs, since even the experts sometimes have difficulty in recognizing which bird was which under certain circumstances. Do not feel bad if you have troubles deciding their values. Some are easy and others are difficult! All attempts are welcome, and hopefully will generate some discussion on the values of signs, and what features to look for when recognizing them.

The image contains twenty birds which I have traced from publications of two tombs, 18 from the Old Kingdom tomb of Ptahhotep, that great old sage, and 2 from the New Kingdom tomb of Rekhmire, the vizier of Thutmose III. There are more than one representation of some of the same birds, done in slightly different styles. The hieroglyphs also face in their original directions, meaning that they can face either left or right.

What you should do, if you choose to play this game, is to post whichever answers you feel comfortable posting. You don't have to identify them all. Here is a kind of form you can use to indicate what answers you like:

#        Phonetic Value          Ptahhotep or Rekhmire?
1.       ___                     ___
2.       ___                     ___
3.       ___                     ___
4.       ___                     ___
5.       ___                     ___
6.       ___                     ___
7.       ___                     ___
8.       ___                     ___
9.       ___                     ___
10.      ___                     ___
11.      ___                     ___
12.      ___                     ___
13.      ___                     ___
14.      ___                     ___
15.      ___                     ___
16.      ___                     ___
17.      ___                     ___
18.      ___                     ___
19.      ___                     ___
20.      ___                     ___ 

If the list seems to enjoy this, and people have interesting comments and suggest features which they think are important to look for, then I will produce more excercises like this one, and we can build our knowledge of signs together. There are no tricks in this exercise, and if you get one wrong, you certainly won't be the first person to do so! The images are black and white line drawings to conserve space, but if you want to talk about what colors they were or should be painted, then we can certainly do that too. There is also the question of which species were depicted in the glyphs, and what the natural colors, not always the same as the artistic conventions would have been.

I hope that people will enjoy this.

Yours, Geoffrey Graham