Towards a typology of hieroglyphic sign functions. Categorization and fluidity in the description of semiotic systems

The understanding of the functions of the signs in the hieroglyphic writing system has been an issue ever since knowledge of this script was lost during Late Antiquity. If ancient authors like Horapollo were still aware of the meaning of some hieroglyphs, they were often unable to correctly explain why these signs had such meanings. Jean-François Champollion’s famous Lettre à M. Dacier relative à l’alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques (1822) was to change this state of affair, when the French scholar identified signs “doués de la faculté d’exprimer des sons”. In my lecture, I will review the insights of Egyptologists regarding the functions of hieroglyphs (from Champollion to contemporary scholars, like Kammerzell, Morenz, Schenkel, Vernus and Winand) and argue that the combination of three key-features — namely, semography, phonemography and autonomy — is necessary and sufficient in order to provide a description of the so-called ‘glottic’ functions of the ancient Egyptian graphemes. In a second part of the talk, I provide prototypical examples for each category and discuss interesting cases, which are somehow at the borders between categories, so as to illustrate the diachronic and synchronic gradience of the system.