Artistes et écriture hiéroglyphique dans l'Égypte des pharaons

Two hundred years ago, the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion revealed the complexity of this writing system which resulted in a rather low literacy rate among Pharaonic population in Antiquity. As a complement to previous studies evaluating the level of literacy in Ancient Egypt through tachygraphy or everyday life writing, the present article aims at addressing the specific issue of hieroglyphic literacy – or, better, literacies – among the actual makers of hieroglyphic inscriptions, i.e. ancient Egyptian artists. Next to highly educated scholarly artists, such an approach allows us to bring to light many other actors of iconographic and monumental production in ancient Egypt, who developed their own uses of hieroglyphs, as parts of their visual environment and culture.