Signs, Language, and Culture: The Semograms of the Pyramid Texts Between Iconicity and Referential Reality

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-72103-6
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Französisch, Band 26, 738 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 1216 g

Reihe: Harvard Egyptological Studies

The signs of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing are pictograms, i.e. images that represent beings and objects of reality. The main characteristic of pictograms is their iconicity. An icon conveys meaning through the image, which distinctly refers to a real referent by depicting several of its defining features. This volume focuses on semograms, which are lexical or semantic pictograms, meaning the image itself participates directly in the encoding of the linguistic message. The Pyramid Texts of the late 3rd millennium BCE constitute the oldest corpus of funerary texts in Egyptian and human history. Their semograms iconically reflect cultural realities of Old Kingdom Egypt and perhaps earlier. The studies you will find in this book are devoted to the dialectics between text, sign, iconicity, and referential reality.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cervelló Autuori, Josep

Orriols-Llonch, Marc

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures and Tables

Notes on Contributors

Introduction Josep Cervelló Autuori and Marc Orriols-Llonch

1 The Bird Semograms of the God Dedun in the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts Heri AbruñaMartí

2 Round, Square or Both? The Skyscape in the Pyramid Texts as Expressed by Semograms M.Victoria Almansa-Villatoro

3 The Offering of the Eye of Horus in the Pyramid Texts: Performativity and Symbolic Credit Lucas Baqué-Manzano

4 Les lits déterminatifs de s?r, «?se coucher?», dans les textes de la pyramide de Téti: Les critères stylistiques comme indices de datation Élise Bène

5 The Falcon Classifiers in the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom FranciscoL. BorregoGallardo

6 Some Remarks on Kinship Determinatives in the Pyramid Texts Marcelo Campagno

7 La graphie de l’??.t dans les Textes des Pyramides et les Textes des Sarcophages Cloé Caron et Valérie Angenot

8 The Root j?r and Its Determinatives in the Royal and Private Funerary Texts of the Old Kingdom

Reflections on the Afterlife in Egypt at the End of the Third Millennium Josep CervellóAutuori

9 Deserts and Mountains on the Walls: Hieroglyphs Related to Desert Areas and Foreign Countries in the Pyramid Texts AndrésDiego Espinel

10 Modulating Semograms: Some Procedures for Semantic Specification and Re-categorization in the Pyramid Texts and Other Mortuary Texts Carlos GraciaZamacona

11 Quelle continuité graphique entre l’iconographie prédynastique et les Textes des Pyramides?

Ou, comment établit-on des catégories dans le réel entre le IVe et le IIIe millénaire? Gwenola Graff

12 Le «?sceptre?» hétès dans les Textes des Pyramides Nadine Guilhou†

13 Sit on Osiris’s Chair: Uses, Meanings and Graphic Forms of ?msi? in the Pyramid Texts Francesca Iannarilli

14 Nédi, “nouveau” dieu de l’Égypte protodynastique, et la normalisation des effigies cultuelles

Codification graphique, référent plastique et fonction idéologique Bernard Mathieu

15 Panther, Panther, Burning (Not so) Bright… The Impact of Iconicity on Sign Identity, Evolution and Obsolescence in the Pyramid Texts Angela McDonald

16 External Male Genitalia Semograms &###x130B8; [D52], &###x130BA; [D53] in the Pyramid Texts Marc Orriols-Llonch

17 De signes en aiguilles: À propos de quelques signes de vêtements et de parures dans les Textes des Pyramides Jennifer Romion

18 Quand l’homme descend du bœuf: De l’utilisation des parties bovines pour désigner le corps humain dans les Textes des Pyramides Simon Thuault

Table of Signs Discussed

Table of Passages Discussed

General Index

Über Autor(innen)

Josep Cervelló Autuori, PhD (1995) is Professor of Egyptology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) and Director of the Institut d’Estudis del Pròxim Orient Antic (IEPOA) of the same university. He co-leads the Spanish-Egyptian Archaeological Mission in Saqqara (SEAMS). He has published monographs, book chapters, and articles mainly on the history, archaeology, and epigraphy of early and Old Kingdom Egypt.

Marc Orriols-Llonch, PhD 2010, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, is an Egyptologist and an associate professor at that university. His main line of research is gender studies in Egyptology, specifically sexual relations and masculinities, topics on which he has published several articles and book chapters.