fishing wizard who CASTS spells. with a fishing rod. featuring wizard camo print and a bass pro shops pyramid wizard hat
I think in the post where you explained the stacking of hieroglyphs you said that you always read towards the faces. Does that mean that hieroglyphs can be mirrord? Otherwise you would have a fixed reading direction or you can't use some signs. How often does the direction change? Like is one text usually one direction or is it line by line? Also assuming I'm correct that hieroglyphs can be fliped does that include all or only the ones with faces? I hope this makes sense ^^; Thank you for always being so kind and for sharing your knowledge with us! I hope you have a wonderful day <3
Yes, monumental inscriptions (on temples/tomb walls etc) can be read left to right or right to left. Same way English is written left to right, but Arabic (+Hebrew, Pashto, Urdu etc) is written right to left. All hieroglyphs with faces that face a particular direction can be carved to face the other way. Some hieroglyphs don’t look any different depending on which way you read them, so they look the same, but yes, all hieroglyphs can be flipped. Some even get rotated or shrunk/enlarged to fit the space. As I’ve said before, Hieroglyphs are a script and an art form. This means they can be adapted to fit a situation and space for the aesthetic.
Directional change depends on what they’re using the Hieroglyphs for, and how the scene they’re using them around is supposed to look. Quite often, monuments will get inscriptions that are read left to right in one area and right to left in another. It’s all about how they want the area to look. Take for instance, the tomb of Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens. Here is a screenshot I took from a video that’s a virtual 360 tour of the tomb:
[image id: Screenshot from a youtube video of the entrance stairs to Nefertari’s tomb, with hieroglyphs on the walls either side. At the bottom of the stairs is a square archway, above which is the goddess Ma'at kneeling with her wings outstretched to fill the space above the arch. On either side of the arch are religious texts for the afterlife. These mirror each other, so all ‘faces’ are facing the direction of the entrance. In the middle of each of these texts is a large seated Anubis. In addition, at the top of the image I have written in teal: L to R with an arrow pointing right on the left side, and R to L with an arrow pointing left on the right side of the image. End id.]
Both sides of the wall are decorated with text from Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead, but you can see that all the faces of the animals/humans in the texts face the entrance of the tomb. This means that on the left, you’re reading left to right, but on the right you’re reading right to left.
Texts can be written L to R, or R to L even within the same scene. Take this scene from the tomb of Sennefer (my beautiful flamboyant vineyard bitch):
[image id: scene from the tomb of Sennefer. In the image you can see grape vines outline the top of the scene. Beneath them are three registers of hieroglyphs. Beneath those hieroglyphs are three figures. On the left, beneath two registers are Osiris and Anubis who face right. On the right, behind a striped (yellow and blue) vertical pole is Sennefer and he is beneath another register. Above Osiris and Anubis the hieroglyphs are read right to left. Above Sennefer the hieroglyphs are read left to right. End id.]
You can see that above Osiris and Anubis, you’d read right to left, but above Sennefer you’d read left to right, and they’re all clearly marked by the register lines. There are repeated words on either register, so you can see how Egyptians deal with mirroring words in this fashion.
When I read hieroglyphs, it depends on the direction they’ve been transcribed in. Texts written on papyri are written in Hieratic, which is always written right to left, but when they’re transcribed the hieroglyphs can be written either way (for ease or not). So for example, my copy of Rewer (written in Kurt Sethe’s terrible handwriting) is written left to right:
[image id: A section of text, 8 lines long, from the Biography of Rewer. All the hieroglyphs are hand drawn, badly. There are line numbers to show where each line started in the original text. End id.]
But my copy of one of the tomb robbery papyri is written right to left (in Peet’s nice neat handwriting):
[image id: 10 lines of hieroglyphs written right to left, neatly. End id.]
So, yeah, hieroglyphs can be read left to right or right to left depending on where they’re written and how they fit into the aesthetic of any given scene. I hope this clears some of the confusion up!
no more historic events this decade that is ENOUGH, i’m putting my foot down
I agree. The last couple of years have been, frankly, showboating, and it’s in very poor taste.
frankly it’s tacky, irresponsible, and downright gauche. this timeline is a total eyesore and i’m pausing it until that twerp Fate develops a sense of decorum
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