The Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

ian Swallow hieroglyph is Gardiner

Gardiner's Sign List

Gardiner's Sign List is a list of common Egyptian hieroglyphs compiled by Sir Alan Gardiner. It is considered a standard reference in the study of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs....

 sign listed no. G36 for swallow

Swallow

The swallows and martins are a group of passerine birds in the family Hirundinidae which are characterised by their adaptation to aerial feeding...

 birds. The Sparrow hieroglyph appears similar in size and shape, but it is used to represent small, or bad items.

The swallow hieroglyph is used in Egyptian hieroglyph

Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...

s as a phonogram

Phonogram (linguistics)

A phonogram is a grapheme which represents a phoneme or combination of phonemes, such as the letters of the Latin alphabet or the Japanese kana...

 or biliteral

Egyptian biliteral signs

Biliteral Egyptian hieroglyphs are symbols which represent a specific sequence of two consonants, also two vowels, or combinational of both, in the language...

 for wr-(or ur), and means items that are "great". It might be considered an equivalent to the cuneiform: gal, GAL

GAL (cuneiform)

GAL is the Sumerian cuneiform for "great".*LÚ.GAL*DEREŠ.KI.GAL...

, also meaning 'great'. The swallow hieroglyph is also an ideogram

Ideogram

An ideogram or ideograph is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as pictograms.Examples of...

 for the swallow birds.

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