In a comment to my last post, Neil said: Maybe you already wrote about it in another post, but I'm curious how you became so interested in reading hieroglyphs.
Well...
I have long been fascinated by ancient Egypt. Ruins of all kinds have always appealed to my eye, but the scale, magnitude, and beauty of ancient Egyptian monuments made them #1 for me. When I was growing up, I had an hieroglyphic stamp set. It's still around somewhere, probably in storage with my other stuff. I got a necklace with a cartouche containing the hieroglyphs for my name, but it didn't contain any of the "cool" symbols I was hoping for, so I moved on to a necklace with an ankh pendant I wore throughout high school and into college.
In my reading over the years, I became more familiar with the gods, goddesses and pharoahs, so I can pick some of their sculptures out when I visit museums like the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose. It has the largest Egyptian collection on the West coast and also has a replica of a tomb built within it. It's very cool (if you're me).
A couple months ago, I saw a docu-drama about deciphering the Rosetta Stone which I really enjoyed. I intended to read more about Champollion's decipherment, but instead I discovered a couple of books on hieroglyphs themselves which captured my interest.
Learning hieroglyphs is just the latest element of an ongoing study occurring in fits and starts over years. I read and soak in what I find interesting and don't worry about forgetting details along the way. It's the pleasure of learning without the pressure of homework or exams.
Besides, they're fun to draw.
tags: hieroglyphs, hieroglyphics, Egyptology, personal+interests
For me its sign language!
ReplyDelete"Egyptology" is something I HAD contemplated studying but then the fascination wore off...
Now its sign language, not as a hoby or anything but I really want to learn it like I did english!
What do the little bids mean in hieroglyphics?
Fitèna
I am very interested in Egyptology, but I'm not sure it's enough to want to learn to read hieroglyphs. I like to learn enough to understand the history and be able to explain, succinctly yet clearly, what my Eye of Horis tattoo represents.
ReplyDeleteWhoops... Horus.
ReplyDeleteI saw that documentary too! And took out the book I bought years ago about the Rosetta stone (when I went to see it at the British museum.
ReplyDeleteI can understand your fascination - I was in Egypt when I was 13, and still the magnitude of those buildings... Impressive is just the beginning :)
Fitena: Sign language also interests me, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. As for birds (I'm assuming you meant birds), there are so many different ones used in hieroglyphs that it's a little infuriating. Basically they stand for different consonants or combinations of consonants.
ReplyDeleteKevin: lol. The Eye of Horus is probably my favorite hieroglyph. The way it was used to denote fractions for measuring is pretty cool.
Scholiast: It's a small world. And I'm envious, I would love to go to Egypt, but I doubt there will be a good time to travel to that region in my lifetime. But you never know...