英語翻譯
Lesson 4
The Egyptian Alphabet
Three-Letter Signs and Phonetic Complements
The Three-Letter Signs
The ancient Egyptians also used three-letter signs,that represented a combination of three consonants.Most of these signs have meaning on their own,but are also frequently used as sound signs.
There exists a whole range of these three-letter signs.The table below gives an overview of the most common ones.
Phonetic Complements
The two- and three-letter signs of the Egyptian script are often complemented with one-letter signs that repeat the whole or part of their sound value.Such additions are called phonetic complements.Usually only the last consonant of the multi-letter sign is repeated.This is however not a fixed rule,and multiple additions are not uncommon.
The table below gives some examples of the use of phonetic complements.
Phonetic complements can be used for a number of reasons.The more common one is that the complementary signs indicate that we have to do with a sound sign (phonogram),and not with a sense sign (ideogram).Furthermore,they can be used to embellish the text,e.g.by filling up unused space (horror vacui).
Inversions
One of the peculiarities of the Egyptian script is the respectful inversion.In words containing the part 'god' or 'king',the sign for the latter is placed in front,out of respect.Note that this involves only the way the word is written,not the way it is pronounced.Some examples are given below.
Vocabulary