The

Egyptian hieroglyph Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

Townsite-city-region is Gardiner sign listed no. O49 for the

intersection In mathematics, the intersection of two or more objects is another object consisting of everything that is contained in all of the objects simultaneously. For example, in Euclidean geometry, when two lines in a plane are not parallel, their i ...

of a town's streets. In some Egyptian hieroglyph books it is called a city plan. It is used in Egyptian hieroglyphs as a

determinative A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...

in the names of town or city placenames. Also, as an

ideogram An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarit ...

in the Egyptian word "city", ''niwt''.

Origin and history

Betrò's modern Egyptian book, ''Hieroglyphics: The Writings of Ancient Egypt'' uses the "crossroads", "intersection" hieroglyph with the name of ''City Plan''. The oldest use of placenames is from the original

cosmetic palette Cosmetic palettes are archaeological Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, originally used in predynastic Egypt, predynastic ancient Egypt, Egypt to grind and apply ingredients for facial or body cosmetics. The decorative palettes of the late 4th mill ...

s of the early years of Ancient Egypt. The

Narmer Palette The Narmer Palette, also known as the Great Hierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, is a significant Egyptian archeological find, dating from about the 31st century BC, belonging, at least nominally, to the category of cosmetic palettes. ...

has a bull with a broken-open Fortress (hieroglyph) enclosure.O13 The

Bull Palette The Bull Palette (French: palette célébrant une victoire) is the fragment of an Ancient Egyptian greywacke palette, carved in low relief and used, at least in principle, as a cosmetic palette for the grinding of cosmetics. It is dated to Naqada ...

contains two cities identified with internal

iconographic Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in the visu ...

hieroglyphs.

Betrò uses the Libyan Palette as her extensive explanation of the ''City Plan''. The Libyan Palette contains seven cities,

fortress A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

-protected; the seven cities are identified inside an approximate–circular–enclosure with iconography, with some signs to become hieroglyphs, and similarly identified ''externally'' with the similar hieroglyphic iconography, also to be used as hieroglyphs. (see list: Libyan Palette) The Fortress (hieroglyph) iconography was still being used in

Ramesses II Ramesses II ( egy, wikt:rꜥ-ms-sw, rꜥ-ms-sw ''Rīʿa-məsī-sū'', , meaning "Ra is the one who bore him"; ), commonly known as Ramesses the Great, was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Along with Thutmose III he is oft ...

's time to identify placenames of defeated locations, referring to the

Nine bows The Nine Bows is a visual representation in Ancient Egyptian art of foreigners or others. Besides the nine bows, there were no other generic representations of foreigners. Due to its ability to stand in for any nine enemies to Ancient Egypt, the ...

. The Fortress (hieroglyph) is shown in three non-

Gardiner's sign list Gardiner's Sign List is a list of common Egyptian hieroglyphs compiled by Sir Alan Gardiner. It is considered a standard reference in the study of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Gardiner lists only the common forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but h ...

ed forms-(all vertical); the category is ''Buildings and Parts of Buildings''.Budge, 1978, (1920) ''An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary,'' ''"fortress"'', (no. 35, 36, 37), section: ''BUILDINGS AND PARTS OF BUILDINGS'', p. cxxvii-cxxx

References

*Betrò, 1995. '' Hieroglyphics: The Writings of Ancient Egypt,'' Betrò, Maria Carmela, c. 1995, 1996-(English), Abbeville Press Publishers, New York, London, Paris (hardcover, ) *Budge. ''An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary,'' E.A.Wallace Budge, (Dover Publications), c 1978, (c 1920), Dover edition, 1978. (In two volumes, 1314 pages.) (softcover, ) *Schulz, Seidel, 1998. ''Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs,'' Editors, Regine Schulz, Matthias Seidel, Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Cologne, English translation version, 538 pages. (hardcover, {{ISBN, 3-89508-913-3) Egyptian hieroglyphs: buildings and parts-of-buildings-etc

Origin and history

See also

References