The
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...
ian Swallow hieroglyph is
Gardiner Gardiner may refer to:
Places
Settlements
;Canada
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sign listed no. G36 for
swallow
The swallows, martins, and saw-wings, or Hirundinidae are a family of passerine songbirds found around the world on all continents, including occasionally in Antarctica. Highly adapted to aerial feeding, they have a distinctive appearance. The ...
birds. The
Sparrow hieroglyph appears similar in size and shape, but it is used to represent small, or bad items.
The ''swallow hieroglyph'' is used in Egyptian
hieroglyph
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters. ...
s as a
phonogram
Phonogram may refer to:
* A sound recording – see Geneva Phonograms Convention
* ''Phonogram'' (comics), a comic book by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
* Phonogram (linguistics), a grapheme which represents a phoneme or a combination of phon ...
or
biliteral[Betrò, 1995. ''Hieroglyphics: The Writings of Ancient Egypt'', synoptic profile only: ''Swallow or other member of the Hirundidae icfamily'', p. 130.] for wr-(or ur), and means items that are ''"great"''. It might be considered an equivalent to the cuneiform: ''gal,
GAL'', also meaning 'great'. The swallow hieroglyph is also an
ideogram
An ideogram or ideograph (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'idea' + 'to write') is a symbol that is used within a given writing system to represent an idea or concept in a given language. (Ideograms are contrasted with phonogram (linguistics), phono ...
for the swallow birds.
See also
*
Gardiner's Sign List#G. Birds
*
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. ''The Rosetta Stone,''
E.A.Wallace Budge, (Dover Publications), c 1929, Dover edition(unabridged), 1989. (softcover, )
*Budge. ''An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary,''
E.A.Wallace Budge, (Dover Publications), c 1978, (c 1920), Dover edition, 1978. (In two volumes, 1314 pages.) (softcover, )
Egyptian hieroglyphs: birds
Legendary birds
Hirundinidae
{{AncientEgypt-stub