ANCR-401 Lessons

As is typical, Professor Wessex is nowhere to be found before class, prefering to let students filter in on her own and forego mingling. A stack of tightly-rolled parchments in the middle of the professor’s ornately-carved desk draw the eye, and one student is bold enough to try to take a peek -- throwing a sly wink to their friends. However, it seems luck was not on their side today.

The Slytherin professor’s blonde bob appears from the doorway between her office and the Room of Runes just in time to catch the unfortunate student in the act. The severe woman sharply jabs her wand in the student’s direction and mutters low under her breath. The student pulls their hand away sharply and recoils as if burnt, though it’s difficult to tell whether this is due to the spell Professor Wessex cast, or because the student has very obviously lost House Points.

Introduction
Get seated, everyone. We have little time to dally. Today’s lesson will be a bit shorter in order to accommodate your midterms after class. Don’t think that just because we have a test means that we won’t be packing in some new information, however.

Today we will finish our survey of the hieroglyphs that are considered the basic “alphabet” of the script – that is, those symbols that make up the basic phonetic values. With these basic symbols, it is in theory possible to write all sounds used in the ancient Egyptian language. Next week, we will look at some symbols that do not represent sounds at all, while next year, we will look at the reasons why there are more hieroglyphs than those we study this year. Things are going to get a bit confusing, but we shall leave that until we have the basics firmly in our heads.

A Brief Linguistic Interlude
At this juncture, we need to delve into the world of linguistics. As you might expect, this is an area in which I am well-versed. While I know you all know that consonants and vowels are in terms of our Latin alphabet, this is not actually the definition of the concept. If you are to be able to recognize and define the concept of vowels and consonants in languages other than your own, we need to look at a technical definition.

I am sure that all of you have noticed by now that all the hieroglyphs we have studied so far this year represent sounds that are commonly known as consonants. Consonants are those sounds that are produced when the air flow from our lungs is constricted in some noticeable way as it passes over our vocal chords and through our mouth and lips. This obstruction can be caused by our tongue, teeth, or lips or all of them in varying positions.

However, language doesn’t just consist of consonants. The second category of sounds that are part of all human speech are called vowels. A vowel is any sound which is produced without any significant restriction or obstruction of the airflow. In our own Latin alphabet, the accepted symbols representing vowels are the letters A, E, I, O, U, as well as sometimes the letter Y (occasionally called a half vowel) in certain words. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the fact that these five (or six) letters can have vastly different pronunciations depending on the word and context, particularly in English.

Vowels in Hieroglyphics
Now, to the point of our discussion. This pertains to your study because in the hieroglyphic script, vowels were not usually included. For us, who are used to writing out both vowels and consonants, this seems a bit bare bones, consisting of just the consonantal skeleton of the language. However, as you will learn in later year -- should you decide to continue -- many ancient scripts, particularly those in the Middle East and Northern Africa, had this near lack of vowels in common. Although, it is important to note stress the near in that last sentence. This does not mean that the language itself had no vowels. In fact, no known language can completely go without vowels, even if they are only weak sounds in between the consonants as the mouth shifts from one to the next.

In many courses on the Egyptian hieroglyphs, it is common to insert a weak “e” between the consonants to make the transcription of the hieroglyphs pronounceable. In other cases, you are just to transcribe the consonantal sounds and then fill in the most sensible vowels once you see what you have.

To aid in this endeavor, there are also some hieroglyphic sounds that are close to the sounds of our vowels, and these hieroglyphs can thus be pronounced as vowels rather than consonants. This is the case for the following five symbols, which together can be used to cover all the vowel sounds we are familiar with from our own language. You will have seen these symbols before, but they bear mentioning again in this new context as well as drawing attention to their additional vowel phonetic values.

You can see from the table that all of these hieroglyphs cover more than one sound value. This is not something unique to only these hieroglyphs (we will cover hieroglyphs with multiple sound values next year); in fact, it is not even unique to hieroglyphs at all. You can see that some of our vowels can also be represented by different hieroglyphs, depending on how they are pronounced. If we wanted to make a table of which hieroglyphs can be used to write the English vowels, we could list both the forearm hieroglyph and the vulture for the vowel “a,” depending on which pronunciation of “a” we are looking for.

This variety of sound values gives us some room to vary the looks of our inscriptions. This is something that was very important for the Egyptian scribes, because the inscriptions were as much a decorative feature as they were a method to record information.

Closing
Now we have finally covered all the hieroglyphs that are needed for the basic sounds of the ancient Egyptian language. One of your assignments today will be a transcription exercise, where you will have to transcribe ten short words from hieroglyphs into the Latin script. All of these words will be normal English words connected to Egypt, so keep this in mind if you encounter symbols that can have several sound values. And, above all, use your common sense, though I sadly recognize this is in short supply in this day and age.

With your assignment parameters examples, here is a handout with all the symbols we have studied so far together with their sound values. This includes the two previous lessons on consonants as well as today’s vowel additions. You will need this to complete your assignment today If you are (and have been) confused about the column which reads “Designation/Name” and bears entries such as “D36” do not worry yourself overmuch. This is simply the standardized method of referrig to individual hieroglyphs which we will be covering next year.

Finally, we arrive at the topic of your midterms today. Your examinations consist of a the aforementioned transcription exercise and a short essay. Neither should be too hard if you have paid attention so far this year. Until next week.

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Vocabulary
Consonant: a sound we produce where breath is at least partly obstructed, commonly by the lips, tongue, or teeth.
Vowel: a sound we produce without any significant restriction or obstruction.
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Original lesson written by Professor Mathilda Stevens
Additional portions by Professor Venita Wessex