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

Transcription of Hieratic into Unicode Hieroglyphic: Part 1

It has been standard practice for Egyptologists to transcribe hieratic sources into hieroglyphic for many years. This is an important application of Unicode Hieroglyphic so it is worthwhile to consider the background.

Alan Gardiner, writing in the 1920s, reasons:

1. The first and foremost reason for transcription is undoubtedly interpretation. Hieratic hands vary greatly, and beginners always, and advanced students often, require to know what familiar character a particular hieratic sign or scrawl represents. Interpretation reduces diversity to unity, permits the comparison of one variant with another, facilitates translation, and performs a multitude of other valuable services. Interpretation is indisputably the primary function for which transcription is employed.

2. There is, however, another reason and purpose for transcription which is not so clearly and fully recognized by scholars, though it is of equal importance with the last. I refer to the reproductive function of transcription. Practical objections of various kinds - expense, printing difficulties, inaccessibility of the originals, etc. - besides the necessity of interpretation referred to above under 1, make the reproduction of hieratic in exact facsimile sometimes unnecessary, and on occasion definitely undesirable. How inconvenient a grammar of Late Egyptian would be, in which all the examples from papyri and ostraca were given in facsimile! … Here I will touch upon another question of expediency. Late Egyptian hieratic is now so well known that in the case of easily legible, relatively "uncial" hands, it is really superfluous to publish every new document in facsimile. Our Egyptological libraries are already far too expensive. For many literary papyri all that is necessary is a good hieroglyphic transcription, leaving it to doubters to verify their doubts by consulting the originals or by inquiring from other scholars to whom the originals are accessible.

To sum up, our transcriptions of hieratic texts of the New Kingdom should at once provide an interpretation of the original hieratic, and also enable the reader to form in his mind a sufficiently good picture of the reading presented by the manuscript. For my own part, I shall not hesitate to use dots and dashes and diacritical marks whenever these seem appropriate or will aid the reader's visualization of the original. Our transcriptions ought most emphatically not to be translations into contemporary hieroglyphic; they are artificial substitutes for the actual manuscripts, substitutes the fabrication of which must be directed by the twin principles of interpretation and reproduction.

From The Transcription of New Kingdom Hieratic; Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 15, No. 1/2 (May, 1929), pp. 48-55 (see  http://www.jstor.org/stable/3854012).

Modern technology has eliminated the problems of expense and inconvenience in making an exact facsimile available of an extant source. A legible photograph costs next to nothing to create and distribute on the web. Some practical concerns Gardiner needed to cope with in his era no longer apply. However, the value of the interpretation and reproductive functions highlighted by Gardiner remains fundamental. Indeed now we have machine automation for search and analysis once hieratic is interpreted and reproduced by transcription into hieroglyphs in one or other digital text encoding. This new facet of reproduction opens up ways of working with hieratic sources undreamed of a century ago. 

To date, the actual work of interpretation and reproduction remain human scholarly activities. Often aided by software applications and (potentially) modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence. Scholarly questions of transliteration and encoding remain open. How to best represent or work with differences among the orthography of Old, Middle and Late Egyptian manuscripts? How to annotate and present hieratic transcriptions as text and/or present sources now we have far richer textual tools available?

One point I'd like to emphasise is the artificial nature of hieratic transcription to hieroglyphic. It is useful to consider this application of a Unicode hieroglyphic writing system in its own right under the overall Unicode umbrella. In my experience it can be confusing to muddle thinking about original hieroglyphic sources and hieratic transcription.

Transcription of Hieratic to Unicode Hieroglyphic plain text need not address all these issues and practicality boils down to two primary considerations.

1. Ensure the Unicode plain text hieroglyphic writing system captures the layout of hieroglyphs for modern transcription requirements (e.g. as factored into  L2/16-018R [pdf]).
2. Identify extensions to the Unicode hieroglyph repertoire helpful for transcription applications.

Part 2 of this series of posts will focus on the repertoire question.

Bob Richmond