Ancient Egyptian Technology
Hieroglyphs, Hieratic, Transliteration
Unicode, EGPZ, XML

Manuel de Codage (MdC)

MdC is currently the most popular convention for the encoding of Egyptian Hieroglyphs as Latin text on computer. The basis of contemporary MdC implementations is the Manuel for the Encoding of Hieroglyphic Texts for Computer input (Buurman, Jan, Nicolas Grimal, Michael Hainsworth, Jochen Hallof, Dirk van der Plas, Informatique et Egyptology 2, Paris 1988), 'MdC88', which describes the system in parallel English, French and German texts.

MdC88 provided a sign list based on an extended version of that given in Egyptian Grammar (Alan Gardiner, Oxford, 3rd Edition, 1957) although in practical terms this list has been superseded by the lists of codes given in Hieroglyphica 2nd Edn. (Hans van den Berg, Nicolas Grimal, Gabriele Hallof , Jochen Hallof, & Dirk van der Plas, Paris & Utrecht, 2000).

Important features of MdC88 are the definitions of typographic codes to help arrange hieroglyphs in groups and the definition of other codes to mark up the text. Contemporary computer software that renders MdC largely follows these conventions although there are a variety of extensions and interpretations.  None of the popular programs for Ancient Egyptian such as InScribe, JSesh, MacScribe and WinGlyph can be said to be 100% MdC88 compatible.

Discussions at the Oxford meeting Informatique et Egyptology in August 2006 resulted in a consensus among developers that it would be useful to agree a minor revision of MdC88 to facilitate better portability of MdC-coded texts and ensure that ambiguities of interpretation be kept to a minimum. Work is underway on such an MdC2008 specification.

MdC2008 does not address the implications of hieroglyphs in the Unicode standard directly. See Unicode and Ancient Egyptian for some discussion of this topic.

Information on MdC2008 will be added here if and when this is available. It is hoped to compile a list of compatibility issues for existing software and a cross reference to link the current state of the art with the original MdC88 material.

Meanwhile, users of current software releases are advised to refer to the MdC-related documentation supplied with their software.