Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Back when I was drawing our names in Mayan hieroglyphs [1], I briefly considered doing the same thing but with Egyptian hieroglyphs. I was ultimately deterred because the rules for writing in Ancient Egyptian are a lot more rigid and I didn't want to have to draw every single glyph that I wanted to use. Furthermore, a full royal name in Egyptian consists of five names. This is called a fivefold titulary or royal protocol.[2] The first name, or Horus Name, is written inside a serekh, which represents the palace. It is called the Horus name because a falcon, the symbol of the Egyptian god Horus, is typically depicted on top of or nearby the serekh. The second name is also called the Nebty Name. Nebty means "two ladies" and refers to two goddesses, Nekhbet and Wadjet, who are heralds of Upper and Lower Egypt, respectively. The nebty name is typically preceded by a symbol that combines the symbols of the two goddesses (a vulture and a cobra) sitting on top of two baskets. The third name, or Golden Horus Name, is usually preceded by the falcon symbol perched on the symbol for gold. The last two names, the Throne Name (or praenomen) and the Personal Name (or nomen; i.e., "birth name") are written inside of cartouches (also called shen rings). The Throne Name is accompanied by the glyphs for a sedge and a bee (implying kingship over both the valley and delta regions of Ancient Egypt) while the Personal Name is accompanied by the glyphs for a duck and the sun (meaning "son/daughter of Ra").

So, what changed? Why am I drawing the Egyptian hieroglyphs now? Well, I noticed that Wikipedia has a script for writing hieroglyphics, so I simply figured out how to use it and then copied the pictures. Let me tell you how it works.

First, I transliterated our names. With a few exceptions, Ancient Egyptians generally transliterated names by assigning single-letter hieroglyphs (called uniliteral signs) to the letters of foreign names. In rare cases they would use hieroglyphs that represented two or three letters (called biliteral and triliteral signs, respectively).[3] The example given on Wikipedia is the name for Ptolemy. The Ancient Egyptians transliterated his name as p-t-w-l-m-y-s.[4][5] So I transliterated our names as follows (I've included the Gardiner numbers [6] in parentheses; I'll explain the punctuation further down):

• Matthew: mꜥtḥyw (G17-D36:X1-V28-M17-M17-G43)
• Leann: ryꜥn (D21-M17-M17-D36:N35)
• Lillian: riryꜥn (D21-M17-D21-M17-M17-D36:N35)
• Lincoln: rynkꜣn (D21-M17-M17-N35:V31-G1-N35)
• Levi: ryꜥy (D21-M17-M17-G1-M17-M17)
• Crook: krwḳ (V31:D21-G43-N29)

I used these for our Personal Names. For the rest I used various translations of our names.[7] For our Horus Names I chose:

• Matthew: mesentiu (F31-S29-N35:X1*Z4-T19-Z3-A21A), which is the title of the blacksmiths of Horus who made harpoons, spears, etc. ("spear maker" being one of the possible meanings of my last name [8])
• Leann: m khetiu Utchā (Aa15-M3:Aa1*X1-D54-G21-A40-Z3-Aa22-I14), which means "follower of a warrior god" (a translation of Leann's maiden name)
• Lillian: nuḥeb-t (N35:G43-V28-D58-X1-M9), which means "lily"
• Lincoln: beqi mui (D58-N29-M17-M17-D54-N35A-M17-M17-W24:Z2), which means "descending water"
• Levi: Ȧmen pet-ȧ mābiu (M17-Y5:N35-C12-Q3:X1-A1-V20:V20:V20-M17-M17-A1-Z3), which means "God is my judge"

For our Nebty Names I chose:

• Matthew: nui (N35:U21:W24-G43-M17-M17-Z7:D38), which means "shepherd"
• Leann: nefer-t āu-t (F35-I9:D21:X1-Y1V-D36-S38-G43), which means "beautiful scepter"
• Lillian: sa-t Ȧmen (G38-X1:H_SPACE-M17-Y5:N35-C12), which means "daughter of God"
• Lincoln: ari ukha (D4-A40-G43-M12-G1-F40-N20:N20:N20), which means "maker of hooks"
• Levi: kheriu (W12:D21-M17-M17-Z7-Y1:Z2), which means "last" (because he's the last child)

For our Golden Horus Names I chose various translations of our last name:

• Matthew: ȧmi āui-sem-t (Z11-D36:D36-O34:X1:N25), which means "dweller [in the] hills"
• Leann: ȧmi mer (Z11-U7:N25), which means "dweller [in the] mountains"
• Lillian: ȧmi pekhar ur (Z11-F47:D21-G36:N36), which means "dweller [in the] great bend" (i.e., the river bend)
• Lincoln: hebu (O4-D58-G41), which means "messenger"
• Levi: uputi (F13:Q3-G43-X1:D54), which means "envoy"

And for our Throne Names I chose translations of our first names:

• Matthew: uṭen Ȧmen (G43-X1:W24-G54-M17-Y5:N35-C12), which means "gift of God"
• Leann: baba kher khaȧnȧ (E10-Z7*N21:Z4*Z1-Aa1:D21-M12-G1-M17-S3-M17-G43-A3-Z3), which means "meadow with grace"
• Lillian: ānkh Ȧmen (S34-M17-Y5:N35-C12), which can mean "oath of God" [9]
• Lincoln: ȧmi bān (Z11-D58-D36:N35:N36), which means "dweller [in the] pool"
• Levi: khnem (W9-N35:G43), which means "joined"

To properly arrange the hieroglyphics, I used http://aoineko.free.fr/index.php?lang=en. The rules are as follows:

1. It only allows you to write left to right, not right to left, or top to bottom (more on that later).
2. Enter the Gardiner numbers you want in sequence from left to right, separating each with a hyphen (-).
3. If you want one character to appear on top of another, separate them with a colon (:) instead of a hyphen.
4. If you want two small characters to appear side by side (i.e., side by side over or under another, larger character), separate them with an asterisk (*) instead of a hyphen.
5. To start on a new line, add a space, an exclamation point, and another space without hyphens ( ! ) before writing more Gardiner numbers.

I'll walk you through one. According to the dictionary I'm using, to write mesentiu I need F31, S29, N35, X1, Z4, T19, Z3, and A21A.[10] To represent them all horizontally, I would simply insert hyphens between them all (F31-S29-N35-X1-Z4-T19-Z3-A21A), which yields:

The N35 glyph is thin enough that we can fit the X1 and Z4 glyphs under it. First, to put the X1 under we use the colon (F31-S29-N35:X1-Z4-T19-Z3-A21A), which yields the next image:

Then to move the Z4 glyph in under the N35 glyph, next to the X1 glyph, we use the asterisk (F31-S29-N35:X1*Z4-T19-Z3-A21A), which gives us the glyphs laid out the way they should be:

If I wanted to write mesentiu again on the next line, I would use the exclamation point flanked by spaces on either side (F31-S29-N35:X1*Z4-T19-Z3-A21A ! F31-S29-N35:X1*Z4-T19-Z3-A21A), which gives us two lines of hieroglyphs:

One last thing. If you need to turn a glyph sideways, just add V to the end of the Gardiner number (e.g., Y1V will turn Y1 so that it is vertical). This only works for glyphs that are allowed to be vertical.

That should be enough for you to draw the hieroglyphs you want.

That website will let you add the cartouche, but it doesn't do a very good job. And it won't let you add the serekh. So for the last part, I used the Wikipedia Sandbox.[11] The wiki code for generating a fivefold titulary is:

{{hiero/5Fold|horus=<hiero>Your Horus Name here</hiero>|nebty=<hiero>Your Nebty Name here</hiero>|goldenhorus=<hiero>Your Golden Horus Name here</hiero>|praenomen=<hiero>Your Throne Name here</hiero>|nomen=<hiero>Your Personal Name here</hiero>}}

You can simply copy and paste this into the edit window, insert the code for your hieroglyphics, and hit Preview. After that I did a screen capture [12] and used GIMP to line up the separate components so they looked like a fivefold titulary that might be found at an archaeological site.

So, without further ado, here they are. First, my fivefold titulary:

And here's Leann's:

Lilli's:

Lincoln's:

And finally Levi's:

Egyptian can be written right to left, top to bottom; left to right, top to bottom; top to bottom, right to left; or top to bottom, left to right. To know what direction to read, simply observe the human and animal characters. If they're facing left, read left to right; if they're facing right (like Lilli's is), read right to left. If the characters are in rows, read horizontally. If the characters are in columns, read vertically. Here's my fivefold titulary in the vertical format:[13]

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Notes:

[1] See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. These will also suggest meanings for our first names.

[2] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fivefold Titulary.

[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian uniliteral signs#Uniliteral signs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian biliteral signs, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian triliteral signs.

[4] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian hieroglyphs#Simple examples.

[5] Note that Egyptian technically didn't have any symbols for vowels, though w is sometimes transliterated as u and y is sometimes transliterated as ii (since it's really two i glyphs).

[6] You can find the Gardiner numbers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

[7] I used this Ancient Egyptian–English Dictionary (warning it's nearly 800 pages long). It lists words by their transliteration, followed by their notation in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, followed by the translation in English. So you'll have to search for the English word you want.

[8] See my post entitled What's in a Name?

[9] It can also mean "(Eternal) Life of God".

[10] All of the hieroglyphs in Gardiner's Sign List can be found at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiHiero/Syntax#Gardiner's sign list. Note that the dictionary uses more symbols than are found in Gardiner's Sign List. Before the dictionary proper begins, there is a list of the hieroglyphs, their phonetic values, and a description. Simply find the symbol in that list and then choose a hieroglyph from Gardiner's Sign List that falls into the same category and is similar in form.

[11] Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox.

[12] That's Ctrl+Alt+PrtSc on a PC (following which you paste in a raster graphics editor like MS Paint or GIMP). On a Mac it's Cmd+Shift+4 (following which you click and drag the mouse over the area you want to grab and the image is saved onto the desktop).

[13] There is no way to get the aoineko.free.fr site or the Wikipedia Sandbox to draw your glyphs facing right or in columns; you'll have to do that manually.

Image attributions:

The individual hieroglyphs were drawn by S. Rosmorduc, G. Watson, and J. Hirst, and are released under the GFDL (see here, scroll to the bottom).

The outlines of the cartouches are by Bryan Derksen and are available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hiero Ca1.svg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hiero Ca2.svg.

The outline of the serekh is by M0tty and is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Srxtail2.svg.