The writing systems of the world vary by origin and development. Most descend from a few creations that, despite their shared origins, change in reaction to their progenitors. Over time, contrast and difference generate a whole series of new scripts, often as part of a process in which writing affirms and marks group identities (Houston & Rojas 2020). Almost all such scripts are line- or stroke-based ; if they ever did have a pictorial basis, it is now long gone, or at least far in the background. But a few scripts do exist that, throughout their history, have retained pictorial signs and a commitment to depicting things. These are the hieroglyphic systems. Alongside the preserved pictoriality of hieroglyphic signs – a major and deliberate cultural choice – we find a thorough integration of hieroglyphic writing with aesthetic culture. Like other scripts, hieroglyphic writing represents language, but it is also an encyclopedically dense mode of visual communication, at once inviting ...
What Is a Hieroglyph ?
Abstracts
We consider two unrelated traditions of hieroglyphic writing, Maya and Egyptian, to discuss distinctive features of such mixed, logo-phonetic writing systems. Hieroglyphic scripts are characterized by their sustained pictoriality and by sign forms that are not reducible to stroke, line patterns or fonts. Moreover, the systems are tightly integrated with a broader aesthetic culture, and represent an encyclopedically dense mode of visual communication. Independent of instrumentalist ideologies of communication often associated with alphabetic writing, hieroglyphic writing goes far beyond that function of supposed, reductive transparency. Implicit meta-discourses point to the fundamentally distinct ideologies of hieroglyphic writing. Hieroglyphic signs do not just stand for linguistic values : they are inviolable things in their own right, suggesting a particular ontology and a capacity for performance. Excess, on both the visual and the semantic levels, distinguishes hieroglyphic writing, and can be variously accentuated in diverse contexts. At once inviting and exclusionary, the two systems thrived for millennia in diverse and changing societies, in inextricable collaboration with their aesthetic cultures and worldviews.
Index terms
Keywords :
hiéroglyphes, écriture, écriture maya, écriture égyptienne, culture esthétique, signes, communication visuelleKeywords :
hieroglyphs, writing, Maya writing, Egyptian writing, aesthetic culture, signs, visual communicationAuthor's notes
These reflections build on discussions held at a workshop organized by Andréas Stauder, David Klotz, and Stephen Houston at the Universität Basel. The other Egyptologists were John Baines, Antonio Loprieno, Dmitri Meeks, and Ludwig Morenz ; beside Houston, the other Mayanists present were Dmitri Beliaev, Simon Martin, Christian Prager, David Stuart, and Marc Zender. Our gathering, entitled « Egyptian and Maya Writing : Comparing Hieroglyphic Domains », June 9-11, 2017, was sponsored by the National Center of Competence in Research eikones, Iconic Criticism (Swiss National Science Foundation and Universität Basel). A further gathering in May 2019, organized by Julie Stauder-Porchet at the Université de Genève with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation, refined our appreciation of the pictorial compositions that inform our respective traditions. We are grateful to our generous host in Geneva, Julie Stauder-Porchet, as well as John Baines, Dmitri Beliaev, and David Stuart. Reviewers for L’Homme provided many helpful comments as well.
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Bibliographical reference
Stephen Houston and Andréas Stauder, « What Is a Hieroglyph ? », L’Homme, 233 | 2020, 9-44.
Electronic reference
Stephen Houston and Andréas Stauder, « What Is a Hieroglyph ? », L’Homme [Online], 233 | 2020, Online since 01 January 2023, connection on 07 July 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lhomme/36526 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/lhomme.36526
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