Ancient Egyptian Technology
Hieroglyphs, Hieratic, Transliteration
Unicode, EGPZ, XML
Egyptological Resources
This page is intended to be an overview of resources relating to Ancient Egyptian on computer. Also see the Egyptological Tools page for computer software used for working with Egyptian and Hieroglyphs.
Hieroglyph Coding schemes
Various coding schemes for hieroglyphs have been used since the 19th Century, for instance those given with the Theinhardt font and expansions to this such as those of Holzhausen and Harrison & Sons (the latter created for the Hieroglyphic Dictionary of Budge). Nowadays the best known scheme is that introduced by Alan Gardiner in his Egyptian Grammar (1927-1957) and this is in the process of being incorporated in the Unicode Standard (see Unicode and Egyptian). An extension to the Gardiner set was provided with the Manuel de Codage (MdC, 1988) and much larger lists have been presented in Hieroglyphica (1993) then Hieroglyphica (2000). Computer software such as GlyphScribe, InScribe, MacScribe and WinGlyph follow Gardiner with extensions largely employing Hieroglyphica code names. An extended (unofficial) sign list for Unicode is given in EGPZ 1.0 Specifications. Modern grammars and dictionaries also, for the most part, follow Hieroglyphica. See Bibliography for a list of useful references.
The EGPZ Word List Project is an ongoing activity to create a list of of Egyptian words. When complete, each word will be given in transliteration and translation, with hieroglyphic sample spellings in MdC, EGPZ Unicode, and formal Unicode.
File and Data Formats
Most current data formats relating to Hieroglyphs are based on the 1988 'Manuel de Codage' paper (MdC88). The original MdC88 document is not yet available online but various interpretations are given as part of software programs used to work with hieroglyphs. A proposal has been made for a 'MdC 2008' specification and we hope to publish this here. MdC2008 is primarily concerned with addressing the issue of the multiple dialects of MdC in use at present while maintaining the viability of existing tools that work with MdC.
The advent of Unicode standards for Egyptian Hieroglyphs enables ways of treating the hieroglyphic script alongside other scripts. In years to come it can be expected this approach will replace MdC for some (but certainly not all) applications. It is our intention to document related data formats and methods on EGPZ.COM as they become available.
XML-based formats have been replacing earlier data formats for many purposes over the last few years, in most cases yielding better and more consistent ways of working with data than was possible with their more ad-hoc predecessors. Since XML uses Unicode text, some of the benefits of XML for treatments of Egyptian texts only become possible in tandem with the availability of Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Unicode Standard. Nevertheless there have already been proposals for use of XML for Egyptian without dependencies on Unicode and we hope to document these here as time permits. In the short term the focus is on the INSX XML File Format being introduced with InScribe 2008 so this is available as an option for developers as a portable alternative to MdC.