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What are hieroglyphics?

Hieroglyphs, also known as ideographs, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian characters, ancient Indian characters, and China Oracle Bone Inscriptions [2] are all independently produced from the simplest pictures and patterns in primitive society. About 5,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians invented hieroglyphics, which are slow to write and difficult to understand. China's hieroglyphics are the crystallization of the wisdom of the Chinese nation-an inheritance of the original way of describing things by ancestors, and also the most vivid and well-preserved characters.

Hieroglyphs refer to writing with graphics, which are similar in shape to what they represent. Generally speaking, hieroglyphics are the earliest characters. Outline the shape characteristics of the object to be expressed with lines or strokes of words.

Pictograph, which comes from pictures and characters, is the most primitive method of word-making, and its pictographic nature is weakened and its symbolism is enhanced. Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian languages, ancient Indian languages, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and stone carvings in China are all independently produced from the simplest pictures and patterns in primitive society.

The hieroglyphic "Moon" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, China is like the shape of a curved moon, and the word "Turtle" (especially the traditional Chinese character [Turtle]) is like the side shape of a turtle. The word "horse" is a four-legged horse, and "fish" is a swimming fish with a head, a body and a tail. The word "wine" without three drops of water is unitary, just like a wine bottle without wine, while the word "day" is like a circle with a little bit in the middle, much like the shape people see when looking directly at the sun.

It is worth mentioning that China's original characters belong to hieroglyphics. Although Chinese characters still retain the characteristics of hieroglyphics, after thousands of years of evolution, they have been far away from the original image, so they are not hieroglyphics, but morphemes with ideographic systems. In addition, the "head font" and "geometry" of Mayan characters are also.

limit

Because some physical things and abstract things cannot be drawn, it has great limitations. Therefore, on the basis of hieroglyphics, Chinese characters have developed into linguistic signs, and other word-making methods have been added, such as cognition, reference, pictophonetic characters, annotation and borrowing. However, these new word-making methods still need to be based on the original hieroglyphics, based on hieroglyphics, by splicing, omitting or adding or deleting symbols.

sovereign right over territory

Hieroglyphics of various countries (regions)

Hieroglyphs are all developed from original pictures. Although the primitive rock paintings in ancient Egypt are not as old as those in Europe, they are longer than those in Oceania and last for more than 10,000 years, making them one of the longest-lasting rock paintings in the world. According to different styles and arts, colors of stone scales, animal species, costumes and weapons, it can be divided into four periods:

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Hieroglyphic living fossil Dongba language

(1) ancient buffalo period (about 9000 BC-3500 BC).

(2) Cattle herding period (about 3500 BC-BC 1500 BC).

③ Horse period (about 1500 BC to the 2nd century AD).

④ Camel period (starting from the 2nd century). African Sahara Rock Paintings, located on the Alger Plateau in the middle of Sahara, not far from the Algerian-Libyan border, are recognized by scholars all over the world as "the largest prehistoric art museum in the world".

The hieroglyphics of ancient India also originated from the development of pictures, mainly distributed in the hilly areas of the India Mountains in central India. The oldest rock paintings can be traced back to the late Paleolithic period 20 thousand years ago. According to the style, Indian rock paintings can be roughly divided into: naturalistic rock paintings, mainly depicting individual wild animals, with simple and realistic shapes. Stylized rock paintings began to extract lines from color blocks, and outlined the outlines of people and animals with simple and heavy lines. Or a combination of silhouette flat painting and thick line shallow painting. Animals are more realistic, while characters are patterned and geometric. Eclectic rock paintings mostly depict horseback riding, elephant riding or walking, and the use of metal.

Dawenkou culture is one of the important remains in the late Neolithic period, named after it was first discovered in Dawenkou site in Tai 'an County, Shandong Province. Its distribution range is adjacent to Bohai Sea in the north, Jiangsu and Anhui in the south and Henan in the west. It began in 4300 BC and developed into Longshan culture in Shandong around 2500 BC. Dawenkou culture pottery has obvious characteristics, and adolescent tooth extraction custom prevails among residents, which is the birthplace of ancient ancestors' tooth extraction custom in the southeast coast of China. The social and economic development of Dawenkou culture has reached a higher level. Many carved symbols that have been found are considered as the precursors of hieroglyphics. Judging from the later unearthed animal bones and patterns on pottery and stone tools, semi-image pictures and pattern symbols appeared in China thousands of years ago.

oracle bone script

According to the research of linguists, a large number of "Oracle Bone Inscriptions" unearthed in modern China were widely and maturely used in Shang Dynasty (from BC 1800 to BC 1200). During this period, China's pottery production, bedroom architecture, mural art, silk weaving production, etc. Invented and used by various advanced cultures.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions, also known as Wen Qi, tortoise shell or tortoise shell bone, is a very important material of ancient Chinese characters. In a total of * * * 65,438+million Oracle bones, there are more than 4,000 different characters and figures, of which about 2,500 characters have been recognized.

There are about 27% pictophonetic characters in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which shows that Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a fairly mature writing system. According to Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Shang Dynasty, Chinese characters at that time had developed into a writing system that could completely record Chinese. In the discovered Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Yin Ruins, the number of words has reached about 4000. There are a lot of signifiers, pictographs, knowing characters, and many pictographs. These characters are very different in appearance from the characters we use today. But from the point of word formation, they are basically the same.

It is recognized by international linguists that the language recorded by Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty belongs to ancient Chinese, not the ancient or primitive languages of other language families. Gao Benhan, a Swedish sinologist, made a detailed study of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the book The Essence and History of Chinese. According to the fact that "buy", "buckle" and "library" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions are homonyms, he proved that Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Dynasty was an early form of Sino-Tibetan language family, not an early form of other languages.

Experts found that the inscriptions on the Oracle bones of Peiligang culture in Henan province 8000 years ago are strikingly similar to those of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins 45000 years later. First, the writing tools are the same, and they all use sharp tools to engrave symbols on tortoise shells and bones; Second, it has the same function. In Shang Dynasty, Oracle Bone Inscriptions was used to record divination contents, and Jia Hu's lettering was also related to divination. Third, the principle of word formation is the same. Jia Hu's inscription is a symbol of rationality, and Oracle Bone Inscriptions has many rational words. Experts believe that "the discovery of Oracle bone inscriptions provides reliable evidence for exploring the historical origin of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty". Like later Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions and modern Chinese characters, Jia Hu's inscription has three structural levels in writing characteristics, while Jia Hu's inscription is the same as that of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, because it is also engraved on hard Oracle bones and other things, with vigorous strokes and sharp bends.

Ancient Egyptian characters

Egyptian hieroglyphics

The hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt were developed through pictures and patterns tens of thousands of years ago, and a systematic hieroglyphics-sacred calligraphy was produced around 4000 BC (6000 years ago). Like Sumerian, Hindi and Oracle Bone Inscriptions in China, it was independently produced from the simplest pictures and patterns in primitive society. However, this kind of writing was only hieroglyphics at first, and later developed into hieroglyphics-composed of three symbols: ideographic, phonetic and radical. Ideographic symbols are concepts or definitions that use pictures to represent something. But ideographic symbols can't express the pronunciation of words, so the ancient Egyptians invented phonetic symbols. Phonetic symbols are also numbers, and * * * has 24 consonants. On this basis, a large number of twins and trisyllables are formed. For example, the mouth is monosyllabic, pronouncing "Y", the swallow is disyllabic, pronouncing "Wr", the beetle is trisyllabic, pronouncing "hpr" and so on. But these pronunciations all have more than one meaning. In order to distinguish them, the ancient Egyptians invented radical symbols. The function of this radical symbol is mainly to distinguish different kinds of symbols, similar to radicals in Chinese characters. Most Egyptian characters have radical symbols. This kind of writing is often engraved on temple walls, religious monuments and paper grass. The main users are monks and scribes. Egyptian hieroglyphics had an important influence on the later alphabet.

In different stages of ancient Egyptian history, Egyptian hieroglyphics have changed many times with the needs of social life. Priests appeared in China, folk characters appeared in Egypt in the later period, and Coptic characters (Egyptian characters written in reformed Greek letters) appeared during Roman rule. Due to various historical reasons, ancient Egyptian characters failed to develop into alphabetic characters. However, ancient Egyptian characters had an important influence on the formation of Phoenician letters. Around 1500 ~ 1000 BC, the Phoenicians who rose on the east coast of the Mediterranean traded with the Egyptians. At this time, learned Phoenician monks changed simple hieroglyphics into orderly letters to help them trade.

Due to the difficulty of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt, with the demise of ancient Egypt, this kind of writing gradually became extinct language and was completely forgotten by people. It is because of the discovery of Rosetta Stone and champollion's successful interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics that the whole history of ancient Egypt is presented to us.

script

There are three kinds of sacred sites: inscriptions, monk texts and mass. At first, the inscription was elegant and popular, and later it became a solemn font carved on the walls of pyramids and temples, and also painted on stone tools and pottery. At the same time, it is also the general name of three fonts. Its symbols look like pictures, but in fact most of them have long lost their pictographic function. Inscriptions are decorative, and monks are practical cursive scripts, which are mainly used for religious texts. The internal structure of these two fonts is exactly the same. Popular style, also known as epistolary style or vernacular style, is a simplified form of monk style.

find

1799, when Napoleon led an expedition to Egypt, one of his officers, bouchard, led soldiers to build fortifications near Rosetta and found a black basalt stone tablet. The tablet is engraved with the same inscription in two languages and three fonts. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs are used above, ancient Egyptian cursive hieroglyphs (also called folk characters) are in the middle, and Greek characters are below. This is the famous stone tablet that was later called "Rosetta Monument" by the world.

Egyptian hieroglyphics (left)

In order to truly understand the culture and history of ancient Egypt, we must read Egyptian hieroglyphics. Therefore, the news of the discovery of the Rosetta stone was published in the Egyptian newsletter at that time, which immediately attracted the attention of scholars all over the world. They tried to decipher the words on the stone tablet. The Greek on the tablet was quickly read. The writing in the middle of the monument was soon proved to be ancient Egyptian folk writing. However, although scholars can understand the meaning of hieroglyphics and folk characters with the help of Greek on stone tablets, they still have not solved the mystery of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Surprisingly, the French teenager champollion, who is only 1 1, is determined to uncover the secrets of ancient Egyptian characters on the Rosetta Monument, let the stone tablet speak and tell people the secrets of ancient Egypt. He worked hard for 2 1 year to read Egyptian hieroglyphics. Champollion found that when the ancient Egyptians wrote the king's name, they always put a box or drew a thick line under the name. Rosetta Stone also has words framed by lines. Is that the king's name? After continuous exploration, champollion finally understood two hieroglyphs of Egyptian King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra by comparing them with Greek. They can be spelled right to left, left to right or top to bottom. Champollion is convinced that the graphic symbols in hieroglyphics generally represent the consonant symbols of pronunciation. Through hard work, by 1822, the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics that had puzzled 1000 years was finally solved by champollion.

It turned out that the inscription on the Rosetta Monument was written by monks in Memphis, Egypt in BC 196 to the king at that time. This king is Ptolemy, the Pharaoh of the 15 dynasty. Shortly after he ascended the throne of the king, he cancelled the taxes owed by the monks, opened up new financial resources for the temple, and took special protection measures for the temple, which brought a series of benefits to the monks, so he quickly won the respect of the monks. So the monk wrote this thank-you letter, and two words written in three fonts were engraved on this black basalt stone tablet.

Rosetta, a small town, is famous for this stone tablet that can solve the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, this famous stone tablet is no longer in this city. It is kept in the British Museum in London.

cuneiform characters

Cuneiform characters in the two river basins

It was developed by Sumerians on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers around 3200 BC. In its 3000-year history, cuneiform characters gradually simplified and abstracted from the original hieroglyphic system and glyph structure, and the number of characters decreased from about 1000 in the early Bronze Age to about 400 in the late Bronze Age. Most of the cuneiform characters that have been found are written on clay tablets, and a few are written on stone, metal or wax tablets. Booksellers use sharpened reed poles or wooden sticks to write on clay tablets, which become hard and not easily deformed after drying or drying.

Cuneiform is used by many ancient civilizations to write their languages, but these languages do not necessarily belong to the same related language family. For example, the Hittites and the Persian Empire also used cuneiform, but both languages are Indo-European languages and have nothing to do with Sumerian. In addition, Akkadians also use cuneiform as a writing tool, but Akkadians are very different from Sumerians. Because most of them are carved on clay tablets, the lines are straight and wedge-shaped, and they are engraved on clay tablets with reed poles or wooden sticks to facilitate writing. Therefore, most of the characters and strokes are river line, and hieroglyphics gradually changed from changeable hieroglyphics to syllabic symbols with the evolution of civilization.

The origin of Mayan characters

Mayan characters first appeared in BC, but the first dated stone tablet was unearthed in 292 BC and found in Tikal. Since then, Mayan characters have only spread in a small area centered on Beden and Tikal. In the middle of the fifth century, Mayan characters spread to the whole Maya region, and at that time, a commercial transaction route was established, and Mayan characters spread to all parts of the country along this route. It is the only country in the United States that has left a written record. In the early AD, they created hieroglyphics, which is one of the five earliest scripts in the world.

Mayan writing is very wonderful. It has pictographic, understandable and tangible sounds, and it is a kind of writing with both intentionality and semantic functions. It is a combination of hieroglyphics and sounds. Maya carved characters not only represent a whole concept, but also have their own unique pronunciation.

The main part of a character in Mayan script is called the main character and the secondary part is called the connecting character. There are two kinds of fonts, namely "geometry" and "head body", and there is also a "whole body" composed of patterns of people, animals and gods, which is mainly used for calendars. Mayan characters are read in groups of two lines from top to bottom, and the order is "left → right → (next paragraph) left → right". Mayan characters are difficult to understand and obscure, and less than one-third of them can be deciphered so far. According to statistics, a word has four syllables. Text is a square figure, similar to China's seal. Part of the picture is signifier and part is annotation, which belongs to "words".

Dongbawen

Dongba hieroglyphics are the characters of Naxi nationality in Lijiang area, belonging to the pictographic ideographic type, including pictograph, ideographic, signifier, pictophonetic and phonographic characters. The total number of characters is about 1600.

Dongba's ideographic method mainly uses one word or several words to express a sentence, from left to right and from top to bottom. This kind of writing was produced about 1 1 century ago. This is a very primitive hieroglyph. Judging from the development of writing form, it is even more primitive than Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and belongs to the early form of writing origin. The earliest symbol images were painted on wood and stone. It was not until the invention of paper that these symbol images were written on paper and became Dongba classics. Dongba is called Dongba because it has mastered this kind of writing.

Lijiang Dongba Pictograph "Love"

With the development of Naxi society and the mutual influence of national culture, some Dongba in Lijiang created Gebawen in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. Geba means disciple, Gebawen is a character created by Dongbashro descendants, and Gebawen is the transformation and development of Dongba. Naxi people created two ancient Chinese characters, which are still in use today. They are not only precious historical materials to solve the mystery of human writing, but also one of the ideal fonts to enrich and develop China's traditional calligraphy and seal cutting. Dongba characters are known as the only complete "living hieroglyphics" in the world. It is one of the oldest hieroglyphs in the world and a "living fossil" of the origin and development of human social characters.

Shuishu

Shuishu is a kind of writing symbol system similar to Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, and it is an ancient book that records the ancient culture of the Shui nationality, such as astronomy, geography, religion and law, and can be described as an "encyclopedia" of the Shui nationality. It is mainly passed down through handwriting and oral communication. According to experts' research, there are currently 2,500 variant characters and ancient water script characters.

The structure of ancient Shuishu characters can be roughly divided into the following three types: first, hieroglyphics, some of which are similar to Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen; The second is imitation of Chinese characters, that is, reverse writing, reverse writing or changing the writing method of Chinese characters, and the third is religious characters, that is, various password symbols representing the primitive religion of the Shui people. The writing form is vertical from right to left, without punctuation. The carriers of ancient Shui characters mainly include oral writing, calligraphy and paper, embroidery, inscription, woodcut, ceramic forging and so on. Because of its pictographic structure, Shui Shu is mainly written and described by natural things such as flowers, birds, insects and fish, as well as some totems such as dragons. It still retains the information of ancient civilization and is still widely used in Shui nationality areas.

The discovery of water books

20 12 On June 20th, Director Chen Lin of Guizhou Ancient Books Protection Center sent an unknown picture of ancient stone carvings unearthed in Pingguo County, Guangxi (see attached chart), and asked our library to identify and interpret it. Our bureau immediately called experts in water calligraphy to study, identify and interpret the three stone carvings of about 300 ancient Chinese characters. After the study by the expert group, it was unanimously agreed that the unknown characters of the stone carving were Shuishu! This script may be the earliest carrier of Shuishu script and one of the ancestors of early hieroglyphics in China. Its archaeological value and historical value need further excavation and textual research! [4]

Naxi language

Naxi hieroglyphics are a kind of hieroglyphics, with more than 1300 characters and a history of 1000 years.

put right

reference data

[1] People's Education Press, Institute of Curriculum Textbooks. History and society of eighth grade compulsory education textbooks. People's Education Press.2018.06: Page 125.

[2] Shao Jingmin. General theory of modern Chinese. Shanghai Education Press.2001

[3] namely gene paul champollion.

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