Altering writing. Neutralizing and re-activating the agency of animate signs in less or non-figurative graphic registers

Since the seminal publications of Lacau (1914, 1926), the avoidance, replacement, alteration, and annihilation of hieroglyphic signs representing animate beings in funerary contexts has been intensively investigated (e.g., Iannarilli 2017, 2018; Pierre, 1997; Roth 2017; Thuault 2020). In this paper, we suggest to look at other types of contexts and to consider graphic registers (Ragazzoli & Albert 2021) that are situated lower on the figurative scale (Vernus 2019, Polis 2020). Indeed, if the statement made by Russo (2010: 252) generally holds true — “la mutilation des signes concerne l’écriture figurée, dite écriture hiéroglyphique, l’écriture non figurée, dite écriture hiératique, n’étant pas sujette à un tel traitement, ce qui s’explique par la nature et le statut des deux types d’écriture” — there are exceptions that shed light on this practice as a whole. In a first step, we situate the phenomenon among the different types of taboos (Polis 2013, Vernus 2020) affecting the written performance in Ancient Egypt and show that alterations of writing do indeed occur most often in cases of high figurativity, i.e., when the hieroglyphic signs can be equated with actual visual images (Schenkel 2011) and thereby have the potential to be deactivated (Winand & Angenot 2016). In a second time, we propose a typology of the different kinds of sign replacements and alterations, illustrating the practice with examples that belong to non-funerary contexts. This allows us to analyze how this practice transfers to less figurative registers and to show that the Egyptian cursive scripts only inherited from some types of alterations to the exclusion of others, but also developed new strategies (color, orientation, degree of cursivity) in order to neutralize or, conversely, to reactivate agentive signs in specific contexts.