{"id":37757,"date":"2024-10-05T10:18:53","date_gmt":"2024-10-05T08:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/fragment-einer-grabinschrift\/"},"modified":"2024-10-05T10:33:05","modified_gmt":"2024-10-05T08:33:05","slug":"fragment-of-a-burial-inscription","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/fragment-of-a-burial-inscription\/","title":{"rendered":"Fragment of a burial inscription"},"content":{"rendered":"

Selected works<\/span><\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

ANCIENT ART: EGYPT<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

Fragment of a burial inscription<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>
\"\"<\/div>
Fragment of a burial inscription, Acq. No. 020.009.0005<\/div>
\u00a9 Stiftung DKM | Photo: SDKM<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Egypt
\nLate Period, mid\u2009-1st millennium BCE
\nLimestone
\n14.8\u2009x\u200913.1\u2009x\u20092.5\u2009cm HWD<\/p>\n

\n

Hieroglyphics \u2013 a form of writing employing pictures, but not a picture writing \u2013 were used from 3000 BCE until the 4th century CE and then forgotten. In was only in 1822 that the brilliant French scholar J.F. Champollion\u2009(1790 \u2013 1832) succeeded in deciphering them. The key to the de\u00adciphering was the famed Rosetta Stone, which was discovered in 1799 during Napoleon\u2019s military and scientific expedition to Egypt\u2009(1798 \u2013 1801). It is a decree written in the “three languages”, Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek. Champollion recognised that hieroglyphs utilised a mixed system of phonetics and pictorial signs and that most of the signs were to be read phonetically. It is now possible to translate ancient Egyptian texts with increasing accuracy, but it is still not possible to pronounce the words correctly because the Egyptians only wrote out the consonants and not the vowels.<\/p>\n

The fragment of an inscription with sunken hieroglyphs \u2013 in which remnants of blue and red paint can still be found \u2013 probably originated from a funerary inscription. Reading from the top to the bottom, the not further identifiable sign for the phonetic value “m”, the bolt for the phonetic value “s” and the ligation\u2009(i.e. the connection of two signs) of vulture and sickle with the reading “ma” have been preserved. The reverse of the fragment reveals traces of the original chisel work.<\/p>\n

Writing was always a component of art and especially during the early phase of writing, images and words were inseparably tied to each other. Unlike our alphabet, the hieroglyphic system of writing was never completed. Although a sign could be given a definition that remained unchanged over millennia, new hieroglyphs could be invented and integrated at any time.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Wiese, 2011<\/p>\n

Literature<\/u>
\nA. Wiese, Die Hieroglyphe Mensch, Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Semiotik, 16\u2009(3\u2009\u2013\u20094), 1994, 297\u2009\u2013\u2009317. Stiftung DKM, \u00c4gypten _ Egypt, Duisburg, 2011, 70 \u2013 71, cat no. 33, Abb. 71.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Collection DKM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":37752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[530,547,37],"tags":[536,565,648,523,538],"class_list":["post-37757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-selcted-works-ancient-art","category-agw-ak-aegyp","category-selected-works","tag-aegypten-en","tag-alte-kunst-en","tag-ancient-art","tag-antike-kunst-en","tag-egypt-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37760,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37757\/revisions\/37760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumdkm.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}