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Hieroglyphic   /hˌaɪroʊglˈɪfɪk/   Listen
Hieroglyphic

adjective
1.
Resembling hieroglyphic writing.  Synonym: hieroglyphical.
2.
Written in or belonging to a writing system using pictorial symbols.  Synonym: hieroglyphical.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Hieroglyphic" Quotes from Famous Books



... the prescription." He jotted down on a card a few hieroglyphic phrases. "And now I must hurry away. I'm sorry, but ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... "My eyes may be good," he observed, after a long pause, "but my detective powers are not. The m's and n's are all alike, and so are most of the other letters. She's an economical person—she makes the same hieroglyphic do duty for both ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... Venice: it is performed by balloting; and when she is so chosen, she reigns indisputably for that ensuing year; but must be elected anew to prolong her empire a moment beyond it. When she is regularly chosen, her name is written with a diamond on a drinking-glass.[265] The hieroglyphic of the diamond is to show her, that her value is imaginary; and that of the glass to acquaint her, that her condition is frail, and depends on the hand which holds her. This wise design admonishes her, neither to overrate nor ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... he would say; "I wish I could; but look, boy, I means this mark for three quarters of a bushel. Mind you recollects it when I axes you, or I'll be blowed if I don't wallop you." But it was only a case of peculiar difficulty which would require a new hieroglyphic, or extract such a long speech from my father. I was well acquainted with his usual scratches and dots, and having a good memory, could put him right when he was puzzled with some misshapen x or z, representing some unknown quantity, like the ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of the same author, an inquisitive and busy man, who pries and insinuates himself into the secrets of others, is termed musca. We are likewise informed by Horus Apollo, that in Egypt a fly was the hieroglyphic of an impudent man, because that insect being beaten away, still returns again; on which account it is that Homer makes it an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various

... measure Thalberg's possession, but he could never understand that turbulent ground-swell of passion which music can also powerfully express, and by which the soul is lifted up to the heights of ecstasy or plunged in depths of melancholy. Music as a vehicle for such meanings was mere Egyptian hieroglyphic, utterly beyond his limitation, absolute bathos ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... remorse,—that thing of lies, and miseries, and hypocritic gladness,—that volume, stained with tears, and scribbled over and over with daily wants, and daily sufferings, and daily meannesses;—to such a reader who, from the hieroglyphic lines of feigned content, can translate the haggard spirit and the pining heart,—to such a man too often depressed and sickened by the contemplation of the carnivorous faces thronging the streets of London—faces ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various

... suppose that there may have been two sages of the same name—as does C. Leemans, who is most intimately versed in the Hieroglyphica—and the second certainly cannot have lived earlier than the VIIth century, since an accurate knowledge of hieroglyphic writing must have been lost far more completely in his time than we can suppose possible in the IVth century. It must be remembered that we still possess well-executed hieroglyphic inscriptions dating from the time of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Cathedral in that other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in painted windows and sculpture; pointed in form, bold in attitude; communal and bourgeois as political symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art; second transformation of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, immovable and sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, which begins at the return from the crusades, and ends with Louis IX. Notre-Dame de Paris is not of pure Romanesque, like the first; nor of pure Arabian race, like ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... hieroglyphic bark Told when the warlike bow should twang, The torch of light with glowing spark, Is held aloft ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... well," he said, "but how about this hieroglyphic? Do you think anybody on earth is capable ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... could have been acted out with similar simple means, with a mummy case and great sarcophagus. The wings of Isis and Nephthys could have been spread over the sky instead of the oppressive walls of the crooked city. Lights instead of shadows could have been made actors and real hieroglyphic inscriptions instead of scrawls. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... made hieroglyphic paintings on wood, which bear a striking resemblance to those of the Mexicans."—Lafitau, vol. ii., p. 43, 225; ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... the top of the stone are in the strange old Egyptian picture-writing, which learned men have agreed to call 'Hieroglyphic'; that is, 'writing in pictures.' This was a very special kind of writing in ancient Egypt, and generally kept for important occasions. The lines in the middle give the same words, but in the ordinary handwriting used for correspondence in ancient Egypt; and last of all is found ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff

... unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... general, and those who were devoted to any particular deity, of the particular deity to whom they were devoted. These marks were usually impressed on their right hand, or on their foreheads, and consisted of some hieroglyphic character, or of the name expressed in vulgar letters, or of the name disguised in numerical letters according to ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... Egypt; were made for the tomb of Shera, who is called on them, "a prophet" and "a royal relative." He was a priest of the period of Sent, the fifth king of the IInd Dynasty, who was living about 4000 B.C. The stele is shown by Lepsius in his Auswahl, Plate 9, and is the earliest example of a hieroglyphic inscription known. These stelae are in the form ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer

... Metamorphoses or the story of the wars of AEneas, and enter life with no knowledge of the simplest facts of psychology. I look forward to a time not far distant, I hope, when our whole paedagogic system will be remodelled. Greek and Latin will then occupy the place which Assyrian or Egyptian hieroglyphic occupies now, and children will be directly prepared for ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... study the same music, they would soon harmonise their fancies, and decipher the hieroglyphic; and this was a thing clearly demonstrated to the Queen Isabella, that Savoisy's horses were oftener stabled at the house of her cousin of Armagnac than in the Hotel St. Pol, where the chamberlain lived, since the destruction of his residence, ordered ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... comprehension! All poetry praised by critics now-a-days is as hard to understand as a hieroglyphic. I own a weakness for Pope and common sense. I could keep up with our age as far as Byron; after him I was thrown out. However, Arthur was declared by the critics to be a great improvement on Byron—more 'poetical in form'—more 'aesthetically artistic'—more 'objective' or 'subjective' ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... as Scott was opening the door of the parlor, the rest of the party being already seated at the breakfast-table, the Dominie was in the act of helping himself to an egg, marked with {p.290} a peculiar hieroglyphic by Mrs. Thomas Purdie, upon which Anne Scott, then a lively rattling girl of sixteen, lisped out, "That's a mysterious-looking egg, Mr. Thomson—what if it should have been meant for the Great Unknown?" Ere the Dominie could reply, her father ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... all companies to build the universe, like a brave poetical fiction, of fine words—and he was deep-read in Malebranche, and in Cudworth's Intellectual System (a huge pile of learning, unwieldly, enormous) and in Lord Brook's hieroglyphic theories, and in Bishop Butler's Sermons, and in the Duchess of Newcastle's fantastic folios, and in Clarke and South and Tillotson, and all the fine thinkers and masculine reasoners of that age—and Leibnitz's Pre-established ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... meagre as it is, may do very well for the exoteric teaching of the order; but the question at this time is, not how it has been explained by modern lecturers and masonic system-makers, but what was the ancient interpretation of the symbol, and how should it be read as a sacred hieroglyphic in reference to the true philosophic system which constitutes the real essence ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... part whereof was whey, The nether orange mixt with grey. This hairy meteor did denounce The fall of sceptres and of crowns; With grisly type did represent Declining age of government, And tell, with hieroglyphic spade, Its own grave and the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... symbolic: which were, however, used together in the same record. In Egypt, written language underwent a further differentiation: whence resulted the hieratic and the epistolographic or enchorial: both of which are derived from the original hieroglyphic. At the same time we find that for the expression of proper names which could not be otherwise conveyed, phonetic symbols were employed; and though it is alleged that the Egyptians never actually achieved complete alphabetic writing, yet it can scarcely be doubted ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... represented on the Egyptian monuments is one of the most singular; it resembles a greyhound, but has long pointed ears and a short curled tail: a closely allied variety still exists in Northern Africa; for Mr. E. Vernon Harcourt[10] states that the Arab boar-hound is "an eccentric hieroglyphic animal, such as Cheops once hunted with, somewhat resembling the rough Scotch deer-hound; their tails are curled tight round on their backs, {18} and their ears stick out at right angles." With this most ancient variety a pariah-like ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... that every great national architecture has been the result and exponent of a great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits there—you must have it everywhere, or nowhere. It is not the monopoly of a clerical company—it is not the exponent of a theological dogma—it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood; it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... your social band, And spent the cheerful, festive night; Oft, honour'd with supreme command, Presided o'er the sons of light: And by that hieroglyphic bright, Which none but Craftsmen ever saw Strong Mem'ry on my heart shall write Those ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... the service; there is a cry for somebody to head them; you see a soldier step out from the ranks to assume this dangerous leadership; the party moves rapidly forward; in a few minutes it is swallowed up from your eyes in clouds of smoke; for one half hour, from behind these clouds, you receive hieroglyphic reports of bloody strife—fierce repeating signals, flashes from the guns, rolling musketry, and exulting hurrahs advancing or receding, slackening or redoubling. At length all is over; the redoubt has been recovered; that which was lost is found again; the jewel ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... and the maze of love Looks for the treaders; everywhere is wove Wit and new mystery; read, and Put in practice, to understand And know each wile, Each hieroglyphic of a kiss or smile; And do it to the full; reach High in your own conceit, and some way teach Nature and art one more Play than ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... and crest." She points with her Milton to a singular hieroglyphic, in a wiry black frame, resting on the marble-painted mantelpiece. "He was very distinguished in his time; and such an excellent Christian." She shakes her head and wipes the tears from her spectacles, as her face, which had before seemed carved in wormwood, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... evidences yet opened up. Compared with even the higher names in this department, we have felt under his ministry as if, when admitted to the company of some party of modern savans employed in deciphering a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk of the desert, and here successful in discovering the meaning of an insulated sign, and there of a detached symbol, we had been suddenly joined by some sage of the olden time, to whom the mysterious inscription was but a piece of common language written in a familiar alphabet, and ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... comparison is instructive. We have no means of testing the value of that eminent writer's negative criticisms of early Roman history. But where additional knowledge has enabled us to apply a test to his opinions, as, for instance, respecting the interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphic language, we find that his scepticism led him signally astray. It seems to be assumed that, because the sceptical spirit has its proper function in scientific inquiry (though even here its excesses will often impede progress), therefore ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... its time whom did it represent? King Amenemhat? The Sun God? Who can rightly tell? Of all hieroglyphic images it remains the one least understood. The unfathomable thinkers of Egypt symbolised everything for the benefit of the uninitiated under the form of awe-inspiring figures of the gods; and it may be, perhaps, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... about this," he said, "and I don't know that I ought to go on with it; it strikes me very forcibly that an attempt is being made to forge a Russian note and that this is a part of the process." The lines on the paper made a sort of hieroglyphic puzzle which it was quite impossible to decipher. I asked him what he intended to do with it and he answered that he would fulfil his order and set the police upon the track of the people who had given it. I went on to Messrs Hunt's printing works in ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... luckiest person for finding them I ever heard of. I'm going to carve one on the tree, here by this last notch under the date. It will be quite neat and symbolical, don't you think? A sort of 'when this you see remember me' hieroglyphic. It will remind you of the long discussions we've had on the subject since we read ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston

... best of an inferior organism; secondly, because their constant practice in solid sculpture, often colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science into the treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome vase, or shallow hieroglyphic. ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... poor Indian village, though it is said that some remains of the monarch's palace still exist. Apropos to which, we have several times observed, since we entered this state, large stones lying in fields, or employed in fences, with strange hieroglyphic characters engraved on them, some of which may be ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... other Egyptian interments. All the furniture of the graves—beads, slate palettes, green paint, ashes, flint knives and pottery—were of novel types, and without any admixture of the mirrors, ushabtis, scarabs, or any of the other furniture of ordinary tombs. Hieroglyphic inscriptions were also absent. The results of the excavations were published in "Naqada and Ballas," and the main conclusions there set forth were that these graves were the interments of a foreign race, differing from the Egyptians ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell

... baobab, each of whose enormous arms would form the trunk of a large tree, beside groups of graceful palms, which, with their feathery-shaped leaves depicted on the sky, lend their beauty to the scene. As a hieroglyphic they always mean "far from home", for one can never get over their foreign air in a picture or landscape. The silvery mohonono, which in the tropics is in form like the cedar of Lebanon, stands in pleasing contrast with the dark color of the motsouri, whose cypress-form is dotted over at present ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... he began to read the order of the events, or even to note the marks of sumptuousness of the appearance of the program, his attention was arrested by a bold, curious hieroglyphic which headed the program. This figuring was in richest purple and gold, and ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... girls had their eyes on her. None so keen as these young misses to know an inward movement by an outward sign of adornment: if they have not as many signals as the ships that sail the great seas, there is not an end of ribbon or a turn of a ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden meaning to these little cruisers ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... enormous expense; for which purpose a ship was built, and several hundred men employed above three years in its removal. It is formed of the finest red syenite, and covered on each side with three lines of hieroglyphic inscriptions, commemorative of Sesostris—the middle lines being the most deeply cut and most carefully finished; and the characters altogether number more than 1600. The obelisk is of a single stone, is 72 feet in height, weighs ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... and have performed some brave action, such as killing an enemy, and bringing off his scalp. Those who have signalized themselves by some gallant exploit, cause a tomahawk to be pricked on their left shoulder, underneath which is also pricked the hieroglyphic sign of the conquered nation. Whatever figure they intend to prick, is first traced on the skin with a bit of charcoal, and having fixed six needles in a piece of wood in two rows, in such a manner that they only stick out about the tenth part of an inch, they ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... Egypt is the product of a period of about four thousand years, and it was written in three kinds of writing, which are called hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. In the first of these the characters were pictures of objects, in the second the forms of the characters were made as simple as possible so that they might be written quickly, and in the third many of them ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... contrary, every human face is a hieroglyphic, and a hieroglyphic, too, which admits of being deciphered, the alphabet of which we carry about with us already perfected. As a matter of fact, the face of a man gives us a fuller and more interesting information than his tongue; for ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... shore, Is there never a seer nor sophist can interpret your wild refrain, When speech the harshest and roughest is seldom studied in vain? My ears are constantly smitten by that dreary monotone, In a hieroglyphic 'tis written—'tis spoken in a tongue unknown; Gathering, growing, and swelling, and surging, and shivering, say! What is the tale you are telling? What is the drift ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... image, likeness, icon, portrait , striking likeness, speaking likeness; very image; effigy, facsimile. figure , figure head; puppet, doll, figurine, aglet[obs3], manikin, lay-figure, model, mammet[obs3], marionette, fantoccini[obs3], waxwork, bust; statue, statuette. ideograph, hieroglyphic, anaglyph [obs3],kanji[Jap]; diagram, monogram. map, plan, chart, ground plan, projection, elevation (plan) 626. ichnography[obs3], cartography; atlas; outline, scheme; view &c. (painting) 556; radiograph, scotograph[obs3], sciagraph[obs3]; spectrogram, heliogram[obs3]. V. represent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... 'Those who are taught Egyptian, first, indeed, learn the grammar and chirography called letter-writing, that is, which is apt for ordinary correspondence; secondly, however, that used by the priests, called sacred writing, to commemorate sacred things; the last also, hieroglyphic, meaning sacred sculpture, one of the first elements of which is {22} cyriologism, meaning, properly speaking, enunciating truth by one or another symbol, or in other words, portraying the meaning by significant emblems.' With Clement agrees the Arabian, Abenephi, who uses this ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... sun, of tigers, and of crocodiles, which we found traced upon the rocks in spots now uninhabited, appeared to me in no way to denote the objects of worship of those nations. Between the banks of the Cassiquiare and the Orinoco, between Encaramada, the Capuchino, and Caycara, these hieroglyphic figures are often seen at great heights, on rocky cliffs which could be accessible only by constructing very lofty scaffolds. When the natives are asked how those figures could have been sculptured, they answer ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... crocodile's head is so formed that its highest points are the eyes; and when it rises obliquely to the surface the eyes are the first part of the whole animal to emerge. The Egyptians observing this, compared it to the sun rising out of the sea, and made it the hieroglyphic representative of the idea of sunrise. Thus Horus Apollo says: When the Egyptians represent the sunrise, they paint the eye of the crocodile, because it is first seen as that animal emerges ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... a skeleton of logical statement, might have seen that I had adduced another reason, viz., the fact that general conceptions are impossible without language (using language in the widest sense, so as to include hieroglyphic, numerical, and other signs), and that as no one has yet discovered any outward traces of language among animals, we are justified in not ascribing to them, as yet, the possession of abstract ideas. This seems to me to explain fully ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... view of helping to explain the fundamentals of the Egyptian religion by means of Sanskrit and other Aryan analogies. It is quite possible that the word neter means "strength," "power," and the like, but these are only some of its derived meanings, and we have to look in the hieroglyphic inscriptions for help in order to determine its most probable meaning. The eminent French Egyptologist, E. de Rouge, connected the name of God, neter, with the other word neter, "renewal" or "renovation," and it would, according to his view, seem as if the fundamental idea of God was ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... swung themselves lightly from their saddles, and returned the polite greetings of the generals; the one in fluent German, the other in equally flowing words, but in a language which no one understood, and to which the only answer was a few murmured words, a smile, and hieroglyphic hand-pressures. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... however, there seem to have been—after making all due allowances—some features of luxury and splendour such as we are wont to associate with civilization. The Aztecs, moreover, though doubtless a full ethnical period behind the ancient Egyptians in general advancement, had worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had begun to put it to some literary use. It would seem that a people may in certain special points reach a level of attainment higher than the level which they occupy in other points. The ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... performing it. He had a deep-rooted objection against permitting the palm of his hand to be seen; a reluctance which common fame attributed to the fact of his having received on that part the impress of a hot iron, in the shape of the letter T, not forgetting to add, that T was the hieroglyphic for Thief. The villain himself affirmed it was simply the mark of a cross, burned into it by a blessed friar, as a charm against St. Vitus's dance, to which he had once been subject. The people, however, were rather sceptical, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... generale)." He refers us to the paper of Herr DEECKE, entitled Der Ursprung der Kyprischen Sylbenschrift, eine palaeographische Untersuchung, Strasbourg, 1877. Another hypothesis has been lately started, and an attempt made to affiliate the Cypriot syllabary to the as yet little understood hieroglyphic system of the Hittites. See a paper by Professor A. H. SAYCE, A Forgotten Empire in Asia Minor, in No. 608 of ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... of the honest cabman and the hieroglyphic letter which he turned over to me? Here it is, addressed, as you observe, ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... the accounts in the journals, an extensive list of proper names calculated to throw great light upon many obscure periods of history. Among these volumes, it is said, some are calculated to give a complete interpretation of hieroglyphic writing—the discoverer having already successfully applied them to the interpretation of the inscriptions engraved on the obelisk of the Hippodrome at Constantinople. This may be quite true, but such statements are to be received with ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... state, or its symbol: a winged globe, from behind which appeared two serpents. Lower down sat a series of gods to which the pharaohs were bringing offerings. On side pillars images of the gods were cut out also in five rows, one above the other, while below were hieroglyphic inscriptions. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... delicacy of outline; and she might indeed have been taken for a Corinthian statue of bronze but for the prominence of her cheek-bones and the slightly African fulness of her lips, which compelled one to recognize her as belonging beyond all doubt to the hieroglyphic race which dwelt upon ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... which seem'd rough-cast before, Search his deep sense, unveil his hidden mirth, And make that fiery which before seem'd earth (Conquering those things of highest consequence, What's difficult of language or of sense), He will appear some noble table writ In the old Egyptian hieroglyphic wit; Where, though you monsters and grotescoes see, You meet all mysteries of philosophy. For he was wise and sovereignly bred To know what mankind is, how 't may be led: He stoop'd unto them, like that wise man, who Rid on a stick, when 's children ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... human figures. The richly decorated girdles and long tunics are carved in low relief with an intricate pattern. While some of the designs are undoubtedly symbolic of the rank, achievements, or attributes of the divinities or chiefs here portrayed, there is nothing hieroglyphic. The images are stiff and show no appreciation of the beauty of the human form. Probably the ancient artists never had an opportunity to study the human body. In Andean villages, even little children do not go naked as they do among primitive ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... pictures manifold, A minster rich in holy effigies, And bearing on entablature and frieze The hieroglyphic oracles of old. Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit; And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ! But only when on form and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... after a summer shower than a natural cluster of these picturesque birches, as they often chance to group themselves in threes, like the Graces—the soft white of the trunks, with dark hieroglyphic shadows here and there disappearing in a drapery of glossy leaves, green above and reflecting the bark colour underneath, all a-quiver and more like live things poised upon the russet twigs than delicate pointed ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... The bottom of the column is bulbous, and set round with triangular leaves. The top is surrounded by three or five bands. A moulding composed of groups of three vertical stripes hangs like a fringe from the lowest band in the space between every two stems. So varied a surface does not admit of hieroglyphic decoration; therefore the projections were by degrees suppressed, and the whole shaft was made smooth. In the hypostyle hall at Gurneh, the shaft is divided in three parts, the middle one being smooth and covered with sculptures, while the ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... physician and naturalist, Thomas Young, who also occupied himself with the three various texts, made better progress. Taking advantage and making use of the parts that had been revealed to him by demotic and hieroglyphic text, he succeeded, in a mechanical way, and by intelligent comparisons in deciphering the names Ptolemaios and Berenike, and in recognizing even the hieroglyphic signs for numbers. Still the true nature of the Egyptian writing was not revealed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... that some of the determinations given in this paper may require further confirmation, it is evident that the combined studies of Dr. Tozzer and Dr. Allen cannot fail to be useful to students of the Maya hieroglyphic writing. ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... eye less luminous, than upon those evenings in which the dance had been suddenly improvised, because he had succeeded in electrifying his audience through the magic of his performance. If he electrified them, it was because he repeated, truly in hieroglyphic tones, but yet easily understood by the initiated, the secret whispers which his delicate ear had caught from the reserved yet impassioned hearts, which indeed resemble the Fraxinella, that plant so full of burning and vivid life, that its flowers are always surrounded by a gas ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... decided; and when breakfast was over and the hieroglyphic oil-coat had been stowed under the seat of the buggy, Janet's horse got the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... of London and Madrid found themselves incapable of crediting this until it was duly placarded in gunpowder print.—It is, indeed, an unaccountable foible men have, not to recognize a plain fact till it has been published in this blazing hieroglyphic. What were England and France doing at Sebastopol? Merely issuing a poster to this effect,—"Turkey is not yours,"—in a type that Russia could feel free to understand. Terribly costly editions these are, and in a type ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors, painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have employed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term, as two performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long as their institutions last, alone ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... Chinese pagoda, with this CHINESE PAGODA PAPER, with the PORCELAIN border, and josses, and jars, and beakers to match; and I can venture to promise one vase of pre-eminent size and beauty. Oh, indubitably! if your la'ship prefers it, you can have the EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHIC PAPER, with the IBIS BORDER to match! The only objection is, one sees it everywhere—quite antediluvian—gone to the hotels even; but, to be sure, if your la'ship has a fancy—At all events, I humbly recommend, what her Grace of Torcaster longs to patronise, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... High Churchmen delighted. Then, Defoe's aim being discovered, both parties joined in the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers. 'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... your luck, such you are called to see and let it come rough or smooth you must surely bear it,'"[2] This happened in 1825. He said he discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven, that he found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in the blood and representing the figures he had previously seen in the heavens.[3] These were without doubt creatures of Nat Turner's own imagination made by him with coloring matter ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... too. There were treasures from Mexico and Peru, from every romantic bit of the wonderful countries south of us— blocks of porphyry with quaint grecques and hieroglyphic painting from Mitla, copper axes and pottery from Cuzco, sculptured stones and mosaics, jugs, cups, vases, little gods and great, sacrificial stones, a treasure house of Aztec and Inca lore—enough to keep one occupied for hours merely to ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... Nor varies a hair's-breadth, sud yu measure her pace: An' when dress'd i' her gingham wi' white spots an' blue, O then is Rebecca so pleasin' to view. Wi' her gray Wolsey stockings by hersel knit an' spun, An' a nice little apron, hieroglyphic'ly done: It needs no rich velvets or Cashmere shawl, To deck out Rebecca o' ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... of forty millions of dollars, is paying an annual dividend of six per cent.; which is extraordinary for these times. New explorations along the Nile, near Luxor, have unearthed a number of royal tombs, with extremely interesting paintings, sarcophagi, and hieroglyphic inscriptions. More notable still; in a Coptic convent in Upper Egypt, there has been found a Greek Codex of the whole New Testament; believed by palaeographers to belong to the third century. Among other things, it omits the concluding verses of the last chapter of the Gospel of Mark, and attaches ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne

... Hail hieroglyphic State machine, Contrived to punish fancy in: Men that are men in thee can feel no pain, And all thy insignificants disdain; Contempt, that false new word for shame, Is, without crime, an empty name; A shadow to amuse mankind, But ne'er to fright the ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... not care to read such a book through at one sitting, but rather to pick it up now and then when in the mood for such light entertainment as it can afford. The spelling has necessarily been changed at times from the antiquated and almost hieroglyphic forms which would defy the most careful typography; but in general the orthography and punctuation are copied verbatim ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various

... rev'rend Cam cuts out his famous way, The melancholy Cowley lay; And, lo! a Muse appeared to his closed sight (The Muses oft in lands of vision play,) Bodied, arrayed, and seen by an internal light: A golden harp with silver strings she bore, A wondrous hieroglyphic robe she wore, In which all colours and all figures were That Nature or that Fancy can create. That Art can never imitate, And with loose pride it wantoned in the air, In such a dress, in such a well-clothed dream, She used of old near fair Ismenus' ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... is to know that to-day we may still find records of these early Bible times in the sculptured monuments which are scattered all over the land, and to know that in the hieroglyphic writings which adorn the walls of tombs or temples many of the events we there ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... aid to this end, and doubtless many students will find in them the key to unlock the mysteries veiled in symbol and hieroglyphic by ancient writers. The author's object has been to make plain and easy of understanding these subjects. Much, however, has been left for private study and research, for many large volumes might be filled if a detailed description of each subject were entered upon, which ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... the immature minds of children that certain letters represent a particular object; in a kindergarten primer the sentence "see the rat and the cat" is accompanied by pictures of the animals specified, in true hieroglyphic simplicity. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... whatever retrospective construction the exigencies of the political campaign might seem to demand, and the candidate could take his position on either side of the fence with entire consistency. Or, if letters must be written, profitable use might be made of the Dighton rock hieroglyphic or the cuneiform script, every fresh decipherer of which is enabled to educe a different meaning, whereby a sculptured stone or two supplies us, and will probably continue to supply posterity, with a very vast and various body of authentic ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... stains and fractures on the wall, Assuming features solemn and terrific, Hinted some Tragedy of that old Hall, Lock'd up in hieroglyphic. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... are written a bit below the middle of the title page, on either side of the printer's device.[32] Also in its typical location at the bottom of the title page is found "a curious mark, a sort of hieroglyphic or cypher," which Burton almost always affixed to his books. The significance of this device remains obscure; it "has usually been supposed to represent the three 'R's' in his name ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... letter which George had that morning received from Marguerite. The missive was short, a mere note, but its terms could leave no doubt as to the relations between the writer and the recipient. Moreover, it ended with a hieroglyphic sign, several times repeated, whose significance is ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... quarter) Misr," vulgarly pronounced "Masr." I may remind the reader that the Assyrians called the Nile-valley "Musur" whence probably the Heb. Misraim a dual form denoting Upper and Lower Egypt which are still distinguished by the Arabs into Sa'id and Misr. The hieroglyphic term is Ta-meraLand of the Flood; and the Greek Aigyptos is probably derived from Kahi-Ptah (region of the great God Ptah) or Ma Ka Ptah (House of the soul of Ptah). The word "Cops" or "Kopt," in Egyptian "Kubti" and pronounced "Gubti," ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... plain, surrounded by a grove of obelisks as tall as palm-trees. Placid sphinxes brooding o'er the Nile—mighty Memnonian countenances calm—had revealed Egypt to me in a sonnet of Tennyson's, and I was ready to gaze on it with pyramidal wonder and hieroglyphic awe. ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... scroll, made up of chains of those strange outlines of serpents, hawks, lions, and so on, which are recognized, even by the least initiated, as hieroglyphics. The middle inscription, made up of lines, angles, and half-pictures, one might surmise to be a sort of abbreviated or short-hand hieroglyphic. The third or lower inscription is Greek—obviously a thing of words. If the screeds above be also made of words, only the elect have any way ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... ii. For delineations of vases, etc., showing Grecian proportion and beauty of form under the fourth and fifth dynasties, see Prisse, vol. ii, Art Industriel. As to the philological question, and the development of language in Egypt, with the hieroglyphic sytem of writing, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap. xii; also Lenormanr; also Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, Abbott's translation, 1877. As to the medical papyrus of Berlin, see Brugsch, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... him, and make him a god to keep the rats away from their food. They made a hieroglyphic scare for him, also, of a basket filled with pandanus leaves and charred firebrands, and hung it up among the trees, that he might know what to expect if he destroyed a house again. This basket was also a scare for a thief, and an imprecation ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... to reveal the abundance of truth." That there might be no question about the accuracy of Smith's translation, he exhibited a certificate signed by the proprietor of the show, saying that he had exhibited the "hieroglyphic characters" to the most learned men in many cities, "and from all the information that I could ever learn or meet with, I find that of Joseph Smith, Jr., to correspond in the most minute matters." * When the papyri were shown to Josiah Quincy and Charles Francis Adams, on the occasion of their ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... of this document was scrawled, in the first place, a rude sketch of a cock's head and comb, with a legend expressing this hieroglyphic to be the sign-manual of Wamba, son of Witless. Under this respectable emblem stood a cross, stated to be the mark of Gurth, the son of Beowulph. Then was written, in rough bold characters, the words, "Le Noir ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... impeachment. The whole scene would stand forth, photographed in fatal minuteness and indelibility upon face, hands, coat-sleeve, shirt-bosom. Mankind would be its own book of life, written in the primal hieroglyphic character,—the language understood by all. Vocal conversation would become obsolete, unless among a few superior persons able ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... some good specimens in a collection of antiquities which had belonged to an old Mexican, who got them principally from the suburb of Tlatelolco, in the neighbourhood of the ancient market-place of the city. Such axes were certainly common among the ancient Mexicans. One of the items of the hieroglyphic tribute-roll in the Mendoza Codex is ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... brook's rapidity of utterance that troubles me. I am quite sure, always, that if I really got the syllables and wrote them down I should, with study, be able to translate it all. It ought not to be half so difficult as these hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions on stone and brick buried in Assyrian ruins for ten thousand years, more or less, and now blithely put into modern speech ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... of science. But the art of writing was practised by them, or at least by the learned part of them, more extensively than by any contemporary nation. Mr. Kenrick gives us a full history of the interpretation of hieroglyphics, the key to which was first given by the parallel inscriptions in hieroglyphic and Greek found on the famous Rosetta stone, and metes to Young and Champollion their due shares in that discovery, of which each uncandidly claimed the whole. The hieroglyphics are now known to be of three kinds, all of which are generally mingled in ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... of representing them; but, since the pomegranate, and some other fruit trees, are drawn with spreading and irregular branches, it is possible that sycamores, and others, which presented large masses of foliage, were really trained in that formal manner, though, from the hieroglyphic signifying "tree" having the same shape, we may conclude it was only a general ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... purchased with the MSS., and it is supposed found with them. On the shoulders of the figure is written in hieroglyphic characters the name, with the addition of clerk and friend of Sesostris. It did not occur to ascertain, until M. Champollion was gone, whether the name on the figure was the same with any of those mentioned in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... key to the interpretation of ancient inscriptions has been found, it by no means follows that every word can at once be definitely explained, or every sentence correctly construed. Thus it happens that the same hieroglyphic or cuneiform text is rendered differently by different scholars; nay, that the same scholar proposes a new rendering not many years after his first attempt at a translation has been published. And what applies to the decipherment of inscriptions applies with equal ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller



Words linked to "Hieroglyphic" :   hieratic, writing system, hieratic script, orthography, writing, hieroglyph



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