Transcription of Hieratic into Unicode Hieroglyphic: Part 2

This post follows on from my earlier Transcription of Hieratic into Unicode Hieroglyphic: Part 1 which stressed the importance of hieratic transcription as an application of Unicode hieroglyphic.

The initial Unicode collection of Egyptian hieroglyphs released in 2009 was based on the Gardiner font and sign list. There is fairly good coverage of signs required for transcription but it is useful to consider how the situation can be improved in the context of Extending the Hieroglyph repertoire in Unicode.

One influential work on hieratic was Hieratische Paläographie by Georg Möller (1876-1921), published in four volumes: Volume I-III 1909-12 and Volume IV 1936 (with introduction by Hermann Grapow). [PDF versions are available for download here]. 

Möller employs numeric codes for hieroglyphs corresponding to hieratic elements as seen in this illustration from Volume I.:

Volume II pp 71-74 links these hieratic codes to the alphanumeric hieroglyph codes used in the Theinhardt font produced for Lepsius.

Hieratic examples are given from a variety of sources, organized by different periods from Old to Late Egyptian through to the Greco-Roman period. Some examples from Volume I:

Here, Möller codes 200 and 200b match Gardiner codes G43 and Z7 and hence Unicode 𓅱 G043 and 𓏲 Z007. Gardiner was very familiar with Hieratische Paläographie and its coding system so it is unsurprising that hieroglyphs in the Gardiner font and coding system links to the Möller numeric system. See Identification of the signs from the Hieratische Paläographie [M-J Nederhof website] for a list of matches between encoded hieroglyphs and Möller codes.

Nevertheless not all Möller codes are present in the Gardiner font and sign list. For example Möller 131 (mouse: encoded as E130 in Hieroglyphica but not yet in the Unicode repertoire).

Möller provides lists of groups/ligatures such as:

which need to be available in any Unicode plain text system.

Regarding extensions to the Unicode hieroglyph repertoire, it is desirable to add Möller codes to the Unicode hieroglyph database of candidates for encoding. His work is over a century old but has been influential and any errors known to modern Egyptologists can be identified in the database (when available for review).

I will be recommending hieroglyphs found in the Möller list but not yet encoded in Unicode be included in the next set of hieroglyphs to be included in the standard and thereby improve the scope of Unicode for transcription of hieratic to hieroglyphic.

This is not to ignore more recent scholarly work involving hieratic. If well-documented material from modern databases such as the Ramses Project and Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae or other publications is available to further improve hieratic transcription this data should also be added to the Unicode hieroglyph database of candidates for encoding.

As a point of interest, I am documenting all Möller groups/ligatures (where applicable) in the cluster list referred to in Foundations of a Universal Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing System in Unicode plain text.

Bob Richmond