Heiroglyphs: What I've Learned

Regarding our class' first EOTO presentations, I found myself taking away a lot of new information about communication technology that I had never heard of before. Discovering how the roots of so many of the fundamental pieces of written print are in China was interesting, and the ways in which modern digital media developed so exponentially quickly says a lot about where we're headed.

However, I found that the single presentation with which I learned the most interesting facts was with regard to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Beforehand, from what I had known from a basic understanding, hieroglyphics were a series of picture symbols used to document the history of certain gods and religious practices the Egyptians would perform. What I wasn't expecting, however, was that the word "hieroglyph" wasn't an Egyptian word at all. In reality, the word is derived from the Greek "hieroglyphikos" which translates to "sacred carvings." This is a more personal connection for me since I'm half Greek, so after seeing and hearing the word with my familiar mindset of the Greek language it instantly connected how this might be a Greek word, and I found myself surprised that I hadn't considered that fact earlier.

The second key new fact I learned was that hieroglyphics are somehow able to match almost 1 to 1 with the Latin alphabet. I'm sure that the importance of the Rosetta Stone was a key factor in this, and it might be possible that hieroglyphics only received this "new" method of translation after the fact, but the fact that the unique picture symbols they used can be traced to the language I speak still fascinated me.

Overall, I feel that language is one of the most interesting parts of communication science that goes too often overlooked. The idea that there are seemingly countless different dialects around the world, as well as how they can all be translated over to one another, is a fact that I find so interesting in the scope of human development. Hieroglyphs are just a single piece of that immense puzzle, and I was glad to see it included in our assignment focusing on the importance of communication.