100 Hieroglyphs

Ancient Egyptian culture is separated from us by several millennia, a lost people, and a bygone language. We can discover much about this fascinating civilization from its physical remains, but perhaps the greatest insights into the Egyptian mind come from hieroglyphs. They reveal the priorities, concerns and beliefs of the Egyptians -- a whole worldview. Unlike the Western alphabet, which is an arbitrary set of symbols not anchored in reality, each Egyptian hieroglyph visually denotes a concep central to Egyptian thinking. The language and its written form are intimately bound up with their imaginative world. Here Barry Kemp presents 100 of the Egyptian hieroglyphs to provide access to this unique culture. Kemp takes us on a sweeping journey through the Egyptian mind, revealing not only aspects of day-to-day life in ancient Egypt, but gradually building a picture of the historical and mythological references that were the cornerstones of Egyptian thought. This fascinating book helps us get inside a long-vanished world.