Ancient Egyptian writng

Michael Adams wrote:
> Heiroglyphs? Herotic, Demotic or Coptic?
I said _ancient_ Egyptian - so clearly *not* Coptic, which is written in
the Coptic _alphabet_ (mainly, tho not entirely, of Greek origin) and
certainly shows vowels as well as consonants. Indeed, it is by
comparison with Coptic, among other things, that one can attempt to
suggest what the vocalism of the ancient language might have been.

as for hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic - I understood that the three
were essentially isomorphic.

>
> Well, from what I know they often used whole words or whole syllybles? Or
> groupings, much like you see in Chinese..
Not the hieroglyphics I've learnt!

> Apis the bull, which thru many changes, became Alpha, or Aleph, or Alif,
> namely our letter A and related sounds to it.. To include the Hebrew and
> Arabic letters.
My understanding is that the notion that the early Semitic abjad was
derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics is very uncertain.

[snip]

>>It must be recent - I thought my info was reasonably up-to-date. Could
>>you point me to the 'right circles' which controvert the accepted wisdom
>>that the phonetic symbols in ancient Egyptian writing represent one, two
>>or three consonants?
I would still like the pointers I requested.

--
Ray
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