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81-502: The Abusir papyri are considered the most important finds of administrative documents from the Old Kingdom. They give detailed information about the running of a royal mortuary temple and include duty rosters for priests, inventories of temple equipment, and lists of daily offerings to the two solar temples at Abu Gorab, north of Abusir, as well as letters and permits. The fragments bear the remains of two different writings. The introduction

162-442: A logogram defines the object of which it is an image. Logograms are therefore the most frequently used common nouns; they are always accompanied by a mute vertical stroke indicating their status as a logogram (the usage of a vertical stroke is further explained below); in theory, all hieroglyphs would have the ability to be used as logograms. Logograms can be accompanied by phonetic complements. Here are some examples: In some cases,

243-554: A pintail duck is read in Egyptian as sꜣ , derived from the main consonants of the Egyptian word for this duck: 's', 'ꜣ' and 't'. (Note that ꜣ or [REDACTED] , two half-rings opening to the left, sometimes replaced by the digit '3', is the Egyptian alef . ) It is also possible to use the hieroglyph of the pintail duck without a link to its meaning in order to represent the two phonemes s and ꜣ , independently of any vowels that could accompany these consonants, and in this way write

324-513: A collection of administrative papyri dating to the 5th dynasty. The papyri were found in the temple complexes of Neferirkare Kakai , Neferefre and queen Khentkaus II . The first fragments of the Abusir papyri were discovered in 1893 during illegal excavations at Abusir. They contained manuscripts with regards to Neferirkare Kakai and were subsequently sold to various Egyptologists and museums. German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt later identified

405-622: A little after Sumerian script , and, probably, [were] invented under the influence of the latter", and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia ". Further, Egyptian writing appeared suddenly, while Mesopotamia had a long evolutionary history of the usage of signs—for agricultural and accounting purposes—in tokens dating as early back to c.  8000 BC . However, more recent scholars have held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy" and that "a very credible argument can also be made for

486-609: A mature writing system used for monumental inscription in the classical language of the Middle Kingdom period; during this period, the system used about 900 distinct signs. The use of this writing system continued through the New Kingdom and Late Period , and on into the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman period , extending into

567-621: A noun is recorded from 1590, originally short for nominalized hieroglyphic (1580s, with a plural hieroglyphics ), from adjectival use ( hieroglyphic character ). The Nag Hammadi texts written in Sahidic Coptic call the hieroglyphs "writings of the magicians, soothsayers" ( Coptic : ϩⲉⲛⲥϩⲁⲓ̈ ⲛ̄ⲥⲁϩ ⲡⲣⲁⲛ︦ϣ︦ ). Hieroglyphs may have emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from c.  4000 BC have been argued to resemble hieroglyphic writing. Proto-writing systems developed in

648-415: A unique reading. For example, the symbol of "the seat" (or chair): Finally, it sometimes happens that the pronunciation of words might be changed because of their connection to Ancient Egyptian: in this case, it is not rare for writing to adopt a compromise in notation, the two readings being indicated jointly. For example, the adjective bnj , "sweet", became bnr . In Middle Egyptian, one can write: which

729-483: Is added between consonants to aid in their pronunciation. For example, nfr "good" is typically written nefer . This does not reflect Egyptian vowels, which are obscure, but is merely a modern convention. Likewise, the ꜣ and ꜥ are commonly transliterated as a , as in Ra ( rꜥ ). Hieroglyphs are inscribed in rows of pictures arranged in horizontal lines or vertical columns. Both hieroglyph lines as well as signs contained in

810-554: Is fully read as bnr , the j not being pronounced but retained in order to keep a written connection with the ancient word (in the same fashion as the English language words through , knife , or victuals , which are no longer pronounced the way they are written.) Besides a phonetic interpretation, characters can also be read for their meaning: in this instance, logograms are being spoken (or ideograms ) and semagrams (the latter are also called determinatives). A hieroglyph used as

891-649: Is named in honor of Saint Cyril . Since the script was conceived and popularised by the followers of Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria, rather than by Cyril and Methodius themselves, its name denotes homage rather than authorship. The Cyrillic script was created during the First Bulgarian Empire . Modern scholars believe that the Early Cyrillic alphabet was created at the Preslav Literary School ,

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972-443: Is not excluded, but probably reflects the reality." Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that function like an alphabet ; logographs , representing morphemes ; and determinatives , which narrow down the meaning of logographic or phonetic words. As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in

1053-564: Is the standard script for writing the following languages: Slavic languages : Non-Slavic languages of Russia : Non-Slavic languages in other countries : The Cyrillic script has also been used for languages of Alaska, Slavic Europe (except for Western Slavic and some Southern Slavic ), the Caucasus , the languages of Idel-Ural , Siberia , and the Russian Far East . The first alphabet derived from Cyrillic

1134-522: Is typically based on ⟨p⟩ from Latin typefaces, lowercase ⟨б⟩ , ⟨ђ⟩ and ⟨ћ⟩ are traditional handwritten forms), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small-caps glyphs. Cyrillic typefaces, as well as Latin ones, have roman and italic forms (practically all popular modern computer fonts include parallel sets of Latin and Cyrillic letters, where many glyphs, uppercase as well as lowercase, are shared by both). However,

1215-469: Is written in hieroglyphs and begins with a date (dates at that time were expressed in the number of national cattle-counts) referring to the reign of Djedkare Isesi , thus dating the manuscripts near the end of the Fifth Dynasty. The fragmented papyri are written in columns divided into three horizontal registers. The hieratic text on the right summarizes allocations of grain. The Abusir Papyri are

1296-581: The faux row to ensure it can be rendered properly across all systems; in some cases, such as ж with k -like ascender, no such approximation exists. Computer fonts typically default to the Central/Eastern, Russian letterforms, and require the use of OpenType Layout (OTL) features to display the Western, Bulgarian or Southern, Serbian/Macedonian forms. Depending on the choices made by the (computer) font designer, they may either be automatically activated by

1377-497: The /θ/ sound was lost. A few uniliterals first appear in Middle Egyptian texts. Besides the uniliteral glyphs, there are also the biliteral and triliteral signs, to represent a specific sequence of two or three consonants, consonants and vowels, and a few as vowel combinations only, in the language. Egyptian writing is often redundant: in fact, it happens very frequently that a word is followed by several characters writing

1458-506: The Caucasus , Central Asia , North Asia , and East Asia , and used by many other minority languages. As of 2019 , around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of

1539-515: The Cyrillic alphabet that originated in medieval period . Paleographers consider the earliest features of script had likely begun to appear between the 10th or 11th century, with the Humac tablet to be the first such document using this type of script and is believed to date from this period. Was weak used continuously until the 18th century, with sporadic usage even taking place in the 20th century. With

1620-761: The European Union , following the Latin and Greek alphabets. The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire during the reign of Tsar Simeon I the Great , probably by the disciples of the two Byzantine brothers Cyril and Methodius , who had previously created the Glagolitic script . Among them were Clement of Ohrid , Naum of Preslav , Constantine of Preslav , Joan Ekzarh , Chernorizets Hrabar , Angelar , Sava and other scholars. The script

1701-658: The Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικός ( hieroglyphikos ), a compound of ἱερός ( hierós 'sacred') and γλύφω ( glýphō '(Ι) carve, engrave'; see glyph ) meaning sacred carving. The glyphs themselves, since the Ptolemaic period , were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικὰ [γράμματα] ( tà hieroglyphikà [grámmata] ) "the sacred engraved letters", the Greek counterpart to the Egyptian expression of mdw.w-nṯr "god's words". Greek ἱερόγλυφος meant "a carver of hieroglyphs". In English, hieroglyph as

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1782-602: The Latin and Cyrillic scripts through Greek, and possibly the Arabic and Brahmic scripts through Aramaic. The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age c.  the 33rd century BC ( Naqada III ), with the first decipherable sentence written in the Egyptian language dating to the 28th century BC ( Second Dynasty ). Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs developed into

1863-521: The Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet . Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet , the first widely adopted phonetic writing system. Moreover, owing in large part to the Greek and Aramaic scripts that descended from Phoenician, the majority of the world's living writing systems are descendants of Egyptian hieroglyphs—most prominently

1944-634: The Second Dynasty (28th or 27th century BC). Around 800 hieroglyphs are known to date back to the Old Kingdom , Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom Eras. By the Greco-Roman period, there were more than 5,000. Scholars have long debated whether hieroglyphs were "original", developed independently of any other script, or derivative. Original scripts are very rare. Previously, scholars like Geoffrey Sampson argued that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence

2025-432: The hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus . Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in

2106-408: The local variant locl feature for text tagged with an appropriate language code , or the author needs to opt-in by activating a stylistic set ss## or character variant cv## feature. These solutions only enjoy partial support and may render with default glyphs in certain software configurations, and the reader may not see the same result as the author intended. Among others, Cyrillic

2187-456: The medieval stage to the late Baroque , without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe . Late Medieval Cyrillic letters (categorized as vyaz' and still found on many icon inscriptions today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow, with strokes often shared between adjacent letters. Peter the Great , Tsar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms ( ru ) in

2268-437: The "goose" hieroglyph ( zꜣ ) representing the word for "son". A half-dozen Demotic glyphs are still in use, added to the Greek alphabet when writing Coptic . Knowledge of the hieroglyphs had been lost completely in the medieval period. Early attempts at decipherment were made by some such as Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya (9th and 10th century, respectively). All medieval and early modern attempts were hampered by

2349-603: The "myth of allegorical hieroglyphs" was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in 391 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I ; the last known inscription is from Philae , known as the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom , from 394. The Hieroglyphica of Horapollo (c. 5th century) appears to retain some genuine knowledge about the writing system. It offers an explanation of close to 200 signs. Some are identified correctly, such as

2430-760: The 1820s by Jean-François Champollion , with the help of the Rosetta Stone . The entire Ancient Egyptian corpus , including both hieroglyphic and hieratic texts, is approximately 5 million words in length; if counting duplicates (such as the Book of the Dead and the Coffin Texts ) as separate, this figure is closer to 10 million. The most complete compendium of Ancient Egyptian, the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache , contains 1.5–1.7 million words. The word hieroglyph comes from

2511-677: The 19th century). After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, some of the former republics officially shifted from Cyrillic to Latin. The transition is complete in most of Moldova (except the breakaway region of Transnistria , where Moldovan Cyrillic is official), Turkmenistan , and Azerbaijan . Uzbekistan still uses both systems, and Kazakhstan has officially begun a transition from Cyrillic to Latin (scheduled to be complete by 2025). The Russian government has mandated that Cyrillic must be used for all public communications in all federal subjects of Russia , to promote closer ties across

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2592-453: The 4th century AD. During the 5th century, the permanent closing of pagan temples across Roman Egypt ultimately resulted in the ability to read and write hieroglyphs being forgotten. Despite attempts at decipherment, the nature of the script remained unknown throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period . The decipherment of hieroglyphic writing was finally accomplished in

2673-421: The 6th and 5th centuries BCE), and after Alexander the Great 's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Ptolemaic and Roman periods. It appears that the misleading quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part, as a response to the changed political situation. Some believed that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true Egyptians ' from some of

2754-530: The 890s as a more suitable script for church books. Cyrillic spread among other Slavic peoples, as well as among non-Slavic Romanians . The earliest datable Cyrillic inscriptions have been found in the area of Preslav , in the medieval city itself and at nearby Patleina Monastery , both in present-day Shumen Province , as well as in the Ravna Monastery and in the Varna Monastery . The new script became

2835-541: The Byzantine Saints Cyril and Methodius and their Bulgarian disciples, such as Saints Naum , Clement , Angelar , and Sava . They spread and taught Christianity in the whole of Bulgaria. Paul Cubberley posits that although Cyril may have codified and expanded Glagolitic, it was his students in the First Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Simeon the Great that developed Cyrillic from the Greek letters in

2916-568: The Serbian constitution; however, the law does not regulate scripts in standard language, or standard language itself by any means. In practice the scripts are equal, with Latin being used more often in a less official capacity. The Zhuang alphabet , used between the 1950s and 1980s in portions of the People's Republic of China, used a mixture of Latin, phonetic, numeral-based, and Cyrillic letters. The non-Latin letters, including Cyrillic, were removed from

2997-625: The Unicode definition of a character: this aspect is the responsibility of the typeface designer. The Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improved computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language. In Microsoft Windows, the Segoe UI user interface font is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8. Some currency signs have derived from Cyrillic letters: The development of Cyrillic letter forms passed directly from

3078-612: The basis of alphabets used in various languages in Orthodox Church -dominated Eastern Europe, both Slavic and non-Slavic languages (such as Romanian , until the 1860s). For centuries, Cyrillic was also used by Catholic and Muslim Slavs. Cyrillic and Glagolitic were used for the Church Slavonic language , especially the Old Church Slavonic variant. Hence expressions such as "И is the tenth Cyrillic letter" typically refer to

3159-518: The classical notion that the Mesopotamian symbol system predates the Egyptian one. A date of c.  3400 BCE for the earliest Abydos glyphs challenges the hypothesis of diffusion from Mesopotamia to Egypt, pointing to an independent development of writing in Egypt. Rosalie David has argued that the debate is moot since "If Egypt did adopt the idea of writing from elsewhere, it was presumably only

3240-444: The concept which was taken over, since the forms of the hieroglyphs are entirely Egyptian in origin and reflect the distinctive flora, fauna and images of Egypt's own landscape." Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar argued further that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols derived from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African" and in "regards to writing, we have seen that a purely Nilotic, hence African origin not only

3321-772: The correspondence between uppercase and lowercase glyphs does not coincide in Latin and Cyrillic types: for example, italic Cyrillic ⟨ т ⟩ is the lowercase counterpart of ⟨ Т ⟩ not of ⟨ М ⟩ . Note: in some typefaces or styles, ⟨ д ⟩ , i.e. the lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨д⟩ , may look like Latin ⟨ g ⟩ , and ⟨ т ⟩ , i.e. lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨т⟩ , may look like small-capital italic ⟨T⟩ . In Standard Serbian, as well as in Macedonian, some italic and cursive letters are allowed to be different, to more closely resemble

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3402-418: The early 18th century. Over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. Thus, unlike the majority of modern Greek typefaces that retained their own set of design principles for lower-case letters (such as the placement of serifs , the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules, although Greek capital letters do use Latin design principles), modern Cyrillic types are much

3483-547: The features of national languages, and was subjected to academic reform and political decrees. A notable example of such linguistic reform can be attributed to Vuk Stefanović Karadžić , who updated the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet by removing certain graphemes no longer represented in the vernacular and introducing graphemes specific to Serbian (i.e. Љ Њ Ђ Ћ Џ Ј), distancing it from the Church Slavonic alphabet in use prior to

3564-479: The federation. This act was controversial for speakers of many Slavic languages; for others, such as Chechen and Ingush speakers, the law had political ramifications. For example, the separatist Chechen government mandated a Latin script which is still used by many Chechens. Standard Serbian uses both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts . Cyrillic is nominally the official script of Serbia's administration according to

3645-401: The find location to near the pyramid temple of the Fifth Dynasty king Neferirkare . This theory was confirmed by Borchardt's discovery of more fragments during excavations at the temple. The papyri from Neferirkare Kakai's complex were found in storerooms located in the southwestern part of the complex. Based on information in the first Abusir Papyri, in the mid-1970s, Czech archeologists under

3726-477: The first person pronoun I . Phonograms formed with one consonant are called uniliteral signs; with two consonants, biliteral signs; with three, triliteral signs. Twenty-four uniliteral signs make up the so-called hieroglyphic alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing does not normally indicate vowels, unlike cuneiform , and for that reason has been labelled by some as an abjad , i.e., an alphabet without vowels. Thus, hieroglyphic writing representing

3807-454: The foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally. Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge. By the 4th century CE, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and

3888-457: The formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language . Hieroglyphs combined ideographic , logographic , syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was

3969-425: The fundamental assumption that hieroglyphs recorded ideas and not the sounds of the language. As no bilingual texts were available, any such symbolic 'translation' could be proposed without the possibility of verification. It was not until Athanasius Kircher in the mid 17th century that scholars began to think the hieroglyphs might also represent sounds. Kircher was familiar with Coptic, and thought that it might be

4050-693: The funerary monument of Khentkaus (the mother of Khentkaus II ). In addition to the extensive excavations in the Abusir pyramid field conducted by the Czech Institute of Egyptology of the Charles University since the 1970s, the Institute of Egyptology of Waseda University started excavations at the site in September 1990. Egyptian hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( / ˈ h aɪ r oʊ ˌ ɡ l ɪ f s / HY -roh-glifs ) were

4131-516: The handwritten letters. The regular (upright) shapes are generally standardized in small caps form. Notes: Depending on fonts available, the Serbian row may appear identical to the Russian row. Unicode approximations are used in the faux row to ensure it can be rendered properly across all systems. In the Bulgarian alphabet , many lowercase letterforms may more closely resemble the cursive forms on

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4212-422: The independent development of writing in Egypt..." While there are many instances of early Egypt-Mesopotamia relations , the lack of direct evidence for the transfer of writing means that "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt". Since the 1990s, the above-mentioned discoveries of glyphs at Abydos , dated to between 3400 and 3200 BCE, have shed further doubt on

4293-442: The key to deciphering the hieroglyphs, but was held back by a belief in the mystical nature of the symbols. The breakthrough in decipherment came only with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon 's troops in 1799 (during Napoleon's Egyptian invasion ). As the stone presented a hieroglyphic and a demotic version of the same text in parallel with a Greek translation, plenty of material for falsifiable studies in translation

4374-470: The leadership of Miroslav Verner were able to find the funerary monument of Neferefre with an additional 2,000 separate pieces of papyri. They were mainly located in the storage rooms in the northwest section of the structure. There is evidence that the papyri originally were fastened with leather straps and stored in wooden boxes. Further excavations by the Czech expedition on the site also discovered papyri at

4455-545: The left, they almost always must be read from left to right, and vice versa. As in many ancient writing systems, words are not separated by blanks or punctuation marks. However, certain hieroglyphs appear particularly common only at the end of words, making it possible to readily distinguish words. The Egyptian hieroglyphic script contained 24 uniliterals (symbols that stood for single consonants, much like letters in English). It would have been possible to write all Egyptian words in

4536-408: The letters' Greek ancestors . Computer fonts for early Cyrillic alphabets are not routinely provided. Many of the letterforms differ from those of modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal between manuscripts , and changed over time. In accordance with Unicode policy, the standard does not include letterform variations or ligatures found in manuscript sources unless they can be shown to conform to

4617-624: The lines are read with upper content having precedence over content below. The lines or columns, and the individual inscriptions within them, read from left to right in rare instances only and for particular reasons at that; ordinarily however, they read from right to left–the Egyptians' preferred direction of writing (although, for convenience, modern texts are often normalized into left-to-right order). The direction toward which asymmetrical hieroglyphs face indicate their proper reading order. For example, when human and animal hieroglyphs face or look toward

4698-494: The little vertical stroke will be explained further on under Logograms:  – the character sꜣ as used in the word sꜣw , "keep, watch" As in the Arabic script, not all vowels were written in Egyptian hieroglyphs; it is debatable whether vowels were written at all. Possibly, as with Arabic, the semivowels /w/ and /j/ (as in English W and Y) could double as the vowels /u/ and /i/ . In modern transcriptions, an e

4779-436: The manner of these signs, but the Egyptians never did so and never simplified their complex writing into a true alphabet. Each uniliteral glyph once had a unique reading, but several of these fell together as Old Egyptian developed into Middle Egyptian . For example, the folded-cloth glyph (𓋴) seems to have been originally an /s/ and the door-bolt glyph (𓊃) a /θ/ sound, but these both came to be pronounced /s/ , as

4860-586: The meaning: "retort [chemistry]" and "retort [rhetoric]" would thus be distinguished. Cyrillic script Co-official script in: The Cyrillic script ( / s ɪ ˈ r ɪ l ɪ k / sih- RIL -ik ), Slavonic script or simply Slavic script is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia . It is the designated national script in various Slavic , Turkic , Mongolic , Uralic , Caucasian and Iranic -speaking countries in Southeastern Europe , Eastern Europe ,

4941-523: The most important early literary and cultural center of the First Bulgarian Empire and of all Slavs : Unlike the Churchmen in Ohrid, Preslav scholars were much more dependent upon Greek models and quickly abandoned the Glagolitic scripts in favor of an adaptation of the Greek uncial to the needs of Slavic, which is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet. A number of prominent Bulgarian writers and scholars worked at

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5022-473: The native typeface terminology in most Slavic languages (for example, in Russian) does not use the words "roman" and "italic" in this sense. Instead, the nomenclature follows German naming patterns: Similarly to Latin typefaces, italic and cursive forms of many Cyrillic letters (typically lowercase; uppercase only for handwritten or stylish types) are very different from their upright roman types. In certain cases,

5103-454: The one hand and Latin glyphs on the other hand, e.g. by having an ascender or descender or by using rounded arcs instead of sharp corners. Sometimes, uppercase letters may have a different shape as well, e.g. more triangular, Д and Л, like Greek delta Δ and lambda Λ. Notes: Depending on fonts available, the Bulgarian row may appear identical to the Russian row. Unicode approximations are used in

5184-448: The order of signs if this would result in a more aesthetically pleasing appearance (good scribes attended to the artistic, and even religious, aspects of the hieroglyphs, and would not simply view them as a communication tool). Various examples of the use of phonetic complements can be seen below: Notably, phonetic complements were also used to allow the reader to differentiate between signs that are homophones , or which do not always have

5265-519: The order of the Church Slavonic alphabet; not every Cyrillic alphabet uses every letter available in the script. The Cyrillic script came to dominate Glagolitic in the 12th century. The literature produced in Old Church Slavonic soon spread north from Bulgaria and became the lingua franca of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Cyrillic in modern-day Bosnia, is an extinct and disputed variant of

5346-523: The orthographic reform of Saint Evtimiy of Tarnovo and other prominent representatives of the Tarnovo Literary School of the 14th and 15th centuries, such as Gregory Tsamblak and Constantine of Kostenets , the school influenced Russian, Serbian, Wallachian and Moldavian medieval culture. This is known in Russia as the second South-Slavic influence. In 1708–10, the Cyrillic script used in Russia

5427-569: The reform. Today, many languages in the Balkans , Eastern Europe, and northern Eurasia are written in Cyrillic alphabets. Cyrillic script spread throughout the East Slavic and some South Slavic territories, being adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic . Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, discussed below. Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. Yeri ( Ы )

5508-576: The same as modern Latin types of the same typeface family. The development of some Cyrillic computer fonts from Latin ones has also contributed to a visual Latinization of Cyrillic type. Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals (with exceptions: Cyrillic ⟨а⟩ , ⟨е⟩ , ⟨і⟩ , ⟨ј⟩ , ⟨р⟩ , and ⟨у⟩ adopted Latin lowercase shapes, lowercase ⟨ф⟩

5589-401: The same sounds, in order to guide the reader. For example, the word nfr , "beautiful, good, perfect", was written with a unique triliteral that was read as nfr : However, it is considerably more common to add to that triliteral, the uniliterals for f and r . The word can thus be written as nfr+f+r , but one still reads it as merely nfr . The two alphabetic characters are adding clarity to

5670-480: The same text, the same phrase, I would almost say in the same word. Visually, hieroglyphs are all more or less figurative: they represent real or abstract elements, sometimes stylized and simplified, but all generally perfectly recognizable in form. However, the same sign can, according to context, be interpreted in diverse ways: as a phonogram ( phonetic reading), as a logogram , or as an ideogram ( semagram ; " determinative ") ( semantic reading). The determinative

5751-509: The school, including Naum of Preslav until 893; Constantine of Preslav ; Joan Ekzarh (also transcr. John the Exarch); and Chernorizets Hrabar , among others. The school was also a center of translation, mostly of Byzantine authors. The Cyrillic script is derived from the Greek uncial script letters, augmented by ligatures and consonants from the older Glagolitic alphabet for sounds not found in Greek. Glagolitic and Cyrillic were formalized by

5832-506: The second half of the 4th millennium BC, such as the clay labels of a Predynastic ruler called " Scorpion I " ( Naqada IIIA period, c.  33rd century BC ) recovered at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa'ab ) in 1998 or the Narmer Palette ( c.  31st century BC ). The first full sentence written in mature hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa'ab, which dates from

5913-423: The semantic connection is indirect ( metonymic or metaphoric ): Determinatives or semagrams (semantic symbols specifying meaning) are placed at the end of a word. These mute characters serve to clarify what the word is about, as homophonic glyphs are common. If a similar procedure existed in English, words with the same spelling would be followed by an indicator that would not be read, but which would fine-tune

5994-485: The spelling of the preceding triliteral hieroglyph. Redundant characters accompanying biliteral or triliteral signs are called phonetic complements (or complementaries). They can be placed in front of the sign (rarely), after the sign (as a general rule), or even framing it (appearing both before and after). Ancient Egyptian scribes consistently avoided leaving large areas of blank space in their writing and might add additional phonetic complements or sometimes even invert

6075-399: The word: sꜣ , "son"; or when complemented by other signs detailed below sꜣ , "keep, watch"; and sꜣṯ.w , "hard ground". For example:  – the characters sꜣ ;  – the same character used only in order to signify, according to the context, "pintail duck" or, with the appropriate determinative, "son", two words having the same or similar consonants; the meaning of

6156-678: Was Abur , used for the Komi language . Other Cyrillic alphabets include the Molodtsov alphabet for the Komi language and various alphabets for Caucasian languages . A number of languages written in a Cyrillic alphabet have also been written in a Latin alphabet , such as Azerbaijani , Uzbek , Serbian , and Romanian (in the Moldavian SSR until 1989 and in the Danubian Principalities throughout

6237-562: Was also adopted. The pre-reform letterforms, called 'Полуустав', were notably retained in Church Slavonic and are sometimes used in Russian even today, especially if one wants to give a text a 'Slavic' or 'archaic' feel. The alphabet used for the modern Church Slavonic language in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic rites still resembles early Cyrillic. However, over the course of the following millennium, Cyrillic adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit

6318-453: Was heavily reformed by Peter the Great , who had recently returned from his Grand Embassy in Western Europe . The new letterforms, called the Civil script , became closer to those of the Latin alphabet; several archaic letters were abolished and several new letters were introduced designed by Peter himself. Letters became distinguished between upper and lower case. West European typography culture

6399-431: Was not read as a phonetic constituent, but facilitated understanding by differentiating the word from its homophones. Most non- determinative hieroglyphic signs are phonograms , whose meaning is determined by pronunciation, independent of visual characteristics. This follows the rebus principle where, for example, the picture of an eye could stand not only for the English word eye , but also for its phonetic equivalent,

6480-562: Was originally a ligature of Yer and I ( Ъ + І = Ы ). Iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І: Ꙗ (not an ancestor of modern Ya, Я, which is derived from Ѧ ), Ѥ , Ю (ligature of І and ОУ ), Ѩ , Ѭ . Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example И = І = Ї , as were typographical variants like О = Ѻ . There were also commonly used ligatures like ѠТ = Ѿ . The letters also had numeric values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order, but inherited from

6561-421: Was suddenly available. In the early 19th century, scholars such as Silvestre de Sacy , Johan David Åkerblad , and Thomas Young studied the inscriptions on the stone, and were able to make some headway. Finally, Jean-François Champollion made the complete decipherment by the 1820s. In his Lettre à M. Dacier (1822), he wrote: It is a complex system, writing figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once, in

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