Hieroglyphic

One of the most famous humanist scholars to become obsessed with Egyptian hieroglyphs was Athanasius Kircher. This is the Egyptian labyrinth produced for his 1679 publication called Turris Babel—or Tower of Babel. Kircher pulled liberally from an account of Herodotus, but made the design his own, incorporating Egyptian symbolism, hieroglyphs, and inscriptions.

In Tower of Babel, Kircher was mostly concerned with the history of human language. He believed that ancient wisdom from before the biblical flood had been preserved in various languages and scripts, including Hebrew and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Here is his account of some alphabetic characters, and their supposed origins in hieroglyphic symbols, often drawing directly on the illustrations of Dürer and the explanations of the Hieroglyphica. Although Kircher was an extremely learned scholar, we now know that his understanding of the hieroglyphs was almost entirely mistaken.

James Burton, the son of a British property developer, lived and traveled widely in Egypt in the early nineteenth century. Like many of his contemporaries, Burton took advantage of Khedivate Egypt established under British patronage. In the aftermath of the battle of Alexandria, the French army surrendered to the British in 1801, setting up favorable conditions for British travelers. Burton is often credited with many so-called "discoveries" and apocryphal stories relate his hedonistic exploits during his Egyptian sojourn, but one of his lasting legacies is his publication of copies of Egyptian relief scenes and texts in a series of small pamphlets called Excerpta Hieroglyphica published in ca. 1825. Considering that the hieroglyphic script had only been deciphered in 1822, the copies are remarkable for their time and often preserve elements that have since deteriorated. These pamphlets were not printed with a letterpress, but with lithographic methods. Copies are exceedingly rare as they were privately printed for Burton to offer directly to colleagues and institutions.

Looking closely at Champollion's Egyptian Grammar published in 1836 shows the individual character of each hand-drawn hieroglyph and its idiosyncrasies. On these pages, Champollion discusses the readings of the royal names inside cartouches.

Deciphering Egyptian required Champollion to carefully examine all the Egyptian scripts—the hieroglyphic and demotic found on the Rosetta Stone, but also the cursive hieratic found on other documents. The key to decipherment was the Ptolemaic royal names found in both Greek and Egyptian on the Rosetta Stone. The cartouche of Ptolemy V, cited from the Rosetta stone, can be seen on the right side of this page from Champollion's grammar, where this section of the king's titulary reads: "King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ptolemy, ever living, beloved of Ptah."

James Henry Breasted (1865–1935), founder of the Oriental Institute and Epigraphic Survey, traveled throughout Egypt photographing, recording, and studying its monuments. He was an ardent adopter of photography to reproduce the inscriptions and scenes found on walls of tombs and temples. Breasted pioneered a methodology using photography combined with epigraphic drawings to help preserve a record that was as accurate as humanly possible. The photographs would show what was visible under particular light conditions, while the drawings would help clarify uncertain or invisible aspects of the photos. In this notebook, Breasted used an annotated photograph and notes to study an inscription from the temple of Abu Simbel known as the "Blessing of Ptah."

The hieroglyphic letterpress font in the Research Archives of the Oriental Institute is housed in a 1929 Hamilton cabinet. Hieroglyphs are arranged together in small compartments within the cabinet's forty-eight drawers.

Each lead type piece is arranged upside down inside the drawer as compositors putting together the text would set the type upside down and backward in preparation for printing (the correct orientation of the hieroglyph is shown in the inset image and in the compartment label at the top next to the compartment number "12"). Arranging the glyphs upside down in the cabinet therefore saved the compositors time and effort when putting together a printing frame.

The hieroglyphs of what's often called the "Gardiner" or "Oxford" font were designed by the artists Nina and Norman de Garis Davies. They had extensive experience painting scenes from Theban tombs. The resulting font was based on Eighteenth Dynasty texts and had an attractive aesthetic quality that pleased Gardiner's eye.

This page from Gardiner's Catalog of Egyptian Hieroglyphic Printing Type shows the bird hieroglyphs used in this hieroglyphic font at their various sizes.

The Oriental Institute and University of Chicago Press used the "Gardiner" letterpress font from 1931 until 1975 for publications requiring hieroglyphs to be typeset. Gardiner's font was not received in time to print Breasted's magisterial edition of the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, which had to be printed in London using Oxford's copy of the font. Hieroglyphic letterpress fonts are no longer in widespread use; most hieroglyphic transcriptions are now made using computer software and everything is born digital. However, all the Oriental Institute publications—even those originally printed on a printing press like Breasted's edition here—have been digitized and made available for free download from the OI's website (http://oi.uchicago.edu). Likewise, older publications from the Research Archives library have been digitized for online access. In this way, the representation of Egyptian hieroglyphs continues to be transformed as new technological horizons come into view.