10:15 Uhr
Guiding the readers – capturing the eyes: ancient Egyptian scripts between readability and monumentality
Frederik Rogner | Switzerland
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Frederik Rogner | Switzerland
Up until recently, there has been a decisive difference between research into the hieroglyphic script and the hieratic script as well as the cursive hieroglyphic script: While the pictorial qualities of the former have long been discovered as a source of inspiration for ancient scribes and artists, research on the latter has for a long time primarily focused on the scripts’ function as carrier of linguistic meaning. In my paper I will consider the visual qualities of these three scripts in a comparative manner, following two complementary perspectives: Comparing the different scripts and their sub-types, I will discuss how the ancient authors guided viewers/readers by playing on the “density” and/or “transparency” of writing signs and texts as a whole. Looking at the scripts individually, a comparison with typographical categorisations of modern-day scripts might offer new ways of describing and classifying ancient texts and also reveal transcultural invariables in the perception of writing. Both perspectives put a particular focus on the ancient authors’ search for monumentality, aiming at the perpetuation of certain messages via the expressive visual elaboration of writing signs.
10:45 Uhr
Hieratic script: autonomy, specific semiotic properties and indexical capacities – Longing for figurativity
Pascal Vernus | EPHE- PSI | France
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Pascal Vernus | EPHE- PSI | France
The hieratic script lost the figurativity of the hieroglyphic signs and their multi-directionality. Therefore, it seemed doomed to writing down mundane and profane texts on easy-to-handle supports. Such is not the case: over time Hieratic extended beyond its original domain and thus overlapped the domain of the hieroglyphic script (and of the linear hieroglyphs). How to account for this change? Practical reasons should not be underestimated, firstly, the heavy work needed for writing down any text in hieroglyphs. Now, there are other reasons. Hieratic developed a large autonomy vis-à-vis the hieroglyphs and acquired specific semiotic values from its being the standard script in certain usages. The very process of writing down documents was invested with some auctoritas that were susceptible to embue the script it implemented. Similarly, Hieratic gained some auctoritas from its being deemed indexical of the writing processes required in many rituals, for instance the rituals implied in the “Letters to the dead”. Moreover one should inquire to what extent the widely attested usage of Hieratic for labelling and listing the objects used in funerary/mortuary rituals and deposited in the tomb (or elsewhere) could originate in some specific semiotic – may be performative – property.