THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING STYLE - HIEROGLYPHS

     

         The origin of the Ancient Egyptian writing style known as hieroglyphs has been a subject of debate. This write-up will tackle the issues surrounding the origin of the Hieroglyphs and also explore Egypt's independent invention of Hieroglyphs.  Hieroglyphs were said to have been in use along the Nile long before there was a unified land known as Egypt. James Allen writes "Unlike Mesopotamian Cuneiform or Chinese, whose beginnings can be traced over several hundred years, hieroglyphic writing seems to appear in Egypt suddenly, shortly before 3000BC as a complete system. Scholars are divided in their opinions about its origins. Some suggest that the earlier developmental stages of the hieroglyphic were written on perishable materials, such as wood and simply have not survived. Others argue that the system could have been invented all at once by an unknown genius."  The writing form discovered in the region of Egypt existed long before there was a unified Egyptian state and it appeared with little or no developmental process.

       Some Scholars think that the Egyptian Hieroglyphics originated from Nubian and that the Egyptian adoption of the Hieroglyphs popularized and enhanced it. The reasons given by these Scholars are that the region of Nubia has deeply impacted aspects of the Egyptian culture, hence the adoption of the Nubian writing format. An Egyptian Scholar seems to consider the possibility of a convincing historical narrative "One of the significant signs of Nubian influence in Egypt can be traced to the fourth millennium BC when the Egyptians embraced the Nubian style of kingship". Christopher Ehret writes that "The sacral Chiefs of the middle Nile Basin culture area (Sudanic), became the divine Kings of Egypt who as late as the third dynasty of Egypt still required actual human beings to be sent along with them into the afterlife. By 3500 BCE a cultural world of sacral Chiefdoms and petty sacral Chiefdoms was gradually into being in Nubia and the idea that undergirded these Social formation also took hold in the far South of Egypt. Recent archaeological work shows that this political and cultural outlook then spread from Southern Egypt northward into lower Egypt."  If the Egyptian adopted The Nubian kingship model then there is a possibility that they adopted a proto-ideographic writing form as well.

      An ancient Greek Scholar named Diodorus Siculus described hieroglyphs as a Nubian invention. He writes, "We must now speak of the Ethiopian writing which is called hieroglyphic among the Egyptians, so that we may omit nothing in our discussion of their antiquities." Egyptian Scholar Gamal Mokhtar says, "Lastly and perhaps most important of all the ancient hieroglyphic symbols were all taken from Nilotic fauna and flora, thus proving that the writing is of purely African origin".