The Ancient Egyptian Swallow hieroglyph is Gardiner 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, though it lacks the swallow's forked tail and is used to represent small, or bad items. The ''swallow hieroglyph'' is used in Egyptian

hieroglyph A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatoni ...

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 phone ...

or biliteralBetrò, 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 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 famili ...

for the swallow 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

See also

References