Istros Books

Who would have thought hieroglyphs are easy to learn? While trying, I realized something: Egyptian writing is emoji writing. Instead of spaces, a little picture goes at the end of each word, the so-called determinative. It isn't pronounced, it just shows what the letters before it stand for. Take London, following this logic. It would look like this: LNDN🏙️ There are no vowels in Egyptian writing, and the little city picture at the end tells you it's a city. Here's a full sentence: "Marcell flies to London": MRCLL👱🏻‍♂️ ✈️ LNDN🏙️ LNDN in hieroglyphs, with the city sign at the end: 𓃭𓈖𓂧𓈖𓊖 Sign by sign, left to right: * 𓃭 Lying lion, that's the L. * 𓈖 Water ripple, that's the N. * 𓂧 Hand, that's the D. * 𓈖 Water ripple, the second N. * 𓊖 Crossroads in a circle, the "city" determinative, i.e. the emoji. Not pronounced, it just tells you it's a city. Stats: There are only about 24 plain (single-sound) letters in the hieroglyphic alphabet. Anyone can learn them in a weekend. True, there are also two-consonant signs (about 100) and three-consonant signs (about 50). Those make the alphabet hard to memorize. Hard to memorize, but perfectly logical. Yet nobody could read it for 1,400 years, until Champollion. The last hieroglyphic inscription was carved at Philae in 394 AD. A people who kept living in the same place forgot their own emojis within a few generations! What isn't used fades from memory. Like the recipe for casting stone.