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Hieroglyphic   Listen
noun
Hieroglyphic, Hieroglyph  n.  
1.
A sacred character; a character used in picture writing, as of the ancient Egyptians, Mexicans, etc. Specifically, in the plural, the picture writing of the ancient Egyptian priests. It is made up of three, or, as some say, four classes of characters: first, the hieroglyphic proper, or figurative, in which the representation of the object conveys the idea of the object itself; second, the ideographic, consisting of symbols representing ideas, not sounds, as an ostrich feather is a symbol of truth; third, the phonetic, consisting of symbols employed as syllables of a word, or as letters of the alphabet, having a certain sound, as a hawk represented the vowel a.
2.
Any character or figure which has, or is supposed to have, a hidden or mysterious significance; hence, any unintelligible or illegible character or mark. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hieroglyphic" Quotes from Famous Books



... translated by the title "Book of the Dead." This title was given to the great collection of funerary texts in the first quarter of the nineteenth century by the pioneer Egyptologists, who possessed no exact knowledge of their contents. They were familiar with the rolls of papyrus inscribed in the hieroglyphic and the hieratic character, for copies of several had been published, [1] but the texts in them were short and fragmentary. The publication of the Facsimile [2] of the Papyrus of Peta-Amen-neb-nest-taui [3] by M. Cadet in 1805 made a long hieroglyphic text and numerous coloured vignettes ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge

... acts by arbitrary or fanciful connections and relations. A Japanese boy of Old Japan, for instance, began his education at from seven to eight years of age and spent three or four years in memorizing the thousands of Chinese hieroglyphic characters contained in the Shisho and Gokyo, nine of the Chinese classics. This completed, his teacher would begin to explain to him the meaning of the characters and sentences. The entire educational effort was to develop the powers of observing and memorizing accidental, superficial, or ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... of that body for 1865, and the following passages are quoted from it:—"Many suggestions, I may observe, have been offered in regard to the intent and import of such lapidary cup and ring cuttings as exist on the Calder Stones; but none of the theories proposed solve, as it seems to me, the hieroglyphic mystery in which these sculpturings are still involved. They are old enigmatical 'handwritings on the wall,' which no modern reader has yet deciphered. In our present state of knowledge with regard to them, let us ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... chide His wisdom, Who doth light with darkness hide, Or deny curtains to thy royal bed, As take this sacred cov'ring from thy head. Secrets of State are points we must not know; This vizard is thy privy-council now, Thou royal riddle, and in everything The true white prince, our hieroglyphic king! Ride safely in His shade, Who gives thee light, And can with blindness thy pursuers smite. O! may they wander all from thee as far As they from peace are, and thyself from war! And wheresoe'er thou dost design ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... Egypt is the product of a period of about four thousand years, and it was written in three kinds of writing, which are called hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. In the first of these the characters were pictures of objects, in the second the forms of the characters were made as simple as possible so that they might be written quickly, and in the ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... sign which is seen under the forms [inline illustration], [inline illustration], or [inline illustration], on a large number of objects of Aryan origin is a sort of sacred hieroglyphic, representing the arani or svastika, formed of two pieces of soft wood fixed by four pins in such a way as not to revolve under the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... been a thaw. One could see on this walk, hardened into temporary stability, the footprints of hundreds of the sons and daughters of labor. Read rightly, that sidewalk in the little manufacturing city was a hieroglyphic of toil, and perhaps of toil as tending to the advance of the whole world. Ellen did not think of that, for she was occupied with more personal considerations, thinking of the dead woman in the great Lloyd house. She pictured her lying dead on that same bed whereon she had ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... and when breakfast was over and the hieroglyphic oil-coat had been stowed under the seat of the buggy, Janet's horse got ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... Baron's "Merry Men All" has been reading and enjoying Mr. BARRY PAIN's Stories and Interludes. The book has a wondrously weird and heavily-lined picture in front, which is just a little too like a "Prophetic Hieroglyphic" in Zadkiel's Almanack. An emaciated and broken-winged devil is apparently carrying an engine-hose through a churchyard, whilst a bat flits against a curious sky, which looks like a young grainer's first attempt at imitating "birds'-eye maple." Upon a second glance it seems possible ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various

... months or so; so naturally they prefer young goat. The Castle, which stands on an eminence, is strong on the sea face, but I presume it would not hold out long on the land side against a regular siege, but as I am no engineer, I will leave it, as Moore's Almanac says of the hieroglyphic, to the learned and the curious. The town consists of small, low huts, the greater part of which are built of stakes and mud, whitewashed over, and thatched with palm leaves. I saw a spot of parched, arid ground which was designated a botanical garden. If it did not contain ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... was that, though I could speak Arabic fairly well, I hardly knew the difference between hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic forms; but the limited symbols I was able to employ were so strong in themselves that a few would go a long way: and if they were not as correct as the sentiments they expressed, Monny was not herself a mistress of hieroglyphic style. I could ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... while, on the other hand, the aristocrats in all the various ministries looked upon him as a dangerous Mephistopheles, courted him, and gave him back with usury the flatteries he bestowed in the higher sphere. As difficult to decipher as a hieroglyphic inscription to the clerks, the vocation of the secretary and his usefulness were as plain as the rule of three to the self-interested. This lesser Prince de Wagram of the administration, to whom the duty of gathering opinions and ideas and making verbal reports thereon was ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... leisure for a secondary interest to gather about the subject of the patrician lecture. Had it any cryptical meaning? Coming from a man so closely connected with the government, could it be open to any hieroglyphic or ulterior interpretations, intelligible to Whigs, and significant to ministerial partisans? Finally, this secondary interest has usurped upon what originally had been a purely personal interest. POPE! What novelty was there, still open to even literary gleaners, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... explain myself without That sad inexplicable beast of prey— That Sphinx, whose words would ever be a doubt, Did not his deeds unriddle them each day— That monstrous hieroglyphic—that long spout Of blood and water, leaden Castlereagh! And here I must an anecdote relate, But luckily of no ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... exoteric teaching of the order; but the question at this time is, not how it has been explained by modern lecturers and masonic system-makers, but what was the ancient interpretation of the symbol, and how should it be read as a sacred hieroglyphic in reference to the true philosophic system which constitutes the real essence and character ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... of Jerusalem, and a hieroglyphic of "the old and new man," completed the decorations on that side of the room. Clean as was the white-washed wall, it was not cleaner than the rest of the place and its furniture. Seldom had the sun enlightened a house where order and general neatness (those ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... cunning and remorse,—that thing of lies, and miseries, and hypocritic gladness,—that volume, stained with tears, and scribbled over and over with daily wants, and daily sufferings, and daily meannesses;—to such a reader who, from the hieroglyphic lines of feigned content, can translate the haggard spirit and the pining heart,—to such a man too often depressed and sickened by the contemplation of the carnivorous faces thronging the streets of London—faces ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various

... Egypt; were made for the tomb of Shera, who is called on them, "a prophet" and "a royal relative." He was a priest of the period of Sent, the fifth king of the IInd Dynasty, who was living about 4000 B.C. The stele is shown by Lepsius in his Auswahl, Plate 9, and is the earliest example of a hieroglyphic inscription known. These stelae are in the form of ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer

... on the western side of the sea. The excellent citizens of London and Madrid found themselves incapable of crediting this until it was duly placarded in gunpowder print.—It is, indeed, an unaccountable foible men have, not to recognize a plain fact till it has been published in this blazing hieroglyphic. What were England and France doing at Sebastopol? Merely issuing a poster to this effect,—"Turkey is not yours,"—in a type that Russia could feel free to understand. Terribly costly editions these are, and in a type utterly hideous; but while nations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... is possible that some of the determinations given in this paper may require further confirmation, it is evident that the combined studies of Dr. Tozzer and Dr. Allen cannot fail to be useful to students of the Maya hieroglyphic writing. ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... began to read the order of the events, or even to note the marks of sumptuousness of the appearance of the program, his attention was arrested by a bold, curious hieroglyphic which headed the program. This figuring was in richest purple and gold, ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... down enemies a quarter his own size, with unsportsmanslike recklessness, is called Rameses in this place, and Sethi in that, and Amen-hotep in the other. With this trifling variation, when you have seen one temple, one obelisk, one hieroglyphic table, you have seen the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... Sylphs, Nymphs, and Salamanders, was thought to afford a proper machinery for a Botanic poem; as it is probable, that they were originally the names of hieroglyphic ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... writers, and hitherto deemed entirely lost. They furnish, according to the accounts in the journals, an extensive list of proper names calculated to throw great light upon many obscure periods of history. Among these volumes, it is said, some are calculated to give a complete interpretation of hieroglyphic writing—the discoverer having already successfully applied them to the interpretation of the inscriptions engraved on the obelisk of the Hippodrome at Constantinople. This may be quite true, but such statements are to be received with ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... arms and crest." She points with her Milton to a singular hieroglyphic, in a wiry black frame, resting on the marble-painted mantelpiece. "He was very distinguished in his time; and such an excellent Christian." She shakes her head and wipes the tears from her spectacles, as her face, which had before seemed carved in wormwood, slightly relaxes ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... face is a hieroglyphic, and a hieroglyphic, too, which admits of being deciphered, the alphabet of which we carry about with us already perfected. As a matter of fact, the face of a man gives us a fuller and more interesting information than his tongue; for his face is the compendium of all he ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Hail hieroglyphic State machine, Contrived to punish fancy in: Men that are men in thee can feel no pain, And all thy insignificants disdain; Contempt, that false new word for shame, Is, without crime, an empty name; A shadow to amuse mankind, But ne'er to fright the wise or well-fixed ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... decorated girdles and long tunics are carved in low relief with an intricate pattern. While some of the designs are undoubtedly symbolic of the rank, achievements, or attributes of the divinities or chiefs here portrayed, there is nothing hieroglyphic. The images are stiff and show no appreciation of the beauty of the human form. Probably the ancient artists never had an opportunity to study the human body. In Andean villages, even little children ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... 101. A short specimen of her composition may be interesting, at any rate to hieroglyphic students: "Mesiceuras ancor mien re mies quan geu ceures o pres deu vous, e deu vous temoes tous la goies e latandres deu mon querque vous cones ces que getou gour e rus pour vous, e qui neu finiraes quotobocs ces mon quere qui vous ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... art is, perhaps, that of which we have the most early specimens. These are to be seen at Boulac, at Vienna, Turin, and the British Museum.[36] The Hieroglyphic, the Archaic, and the Graeco-Egyptian are all unmistakably the consecutive outcome of the national original style, which had totally disappeared in the beginning of our era. Few of the embroideries are more than two thousand five hundred years ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... the same music, they would soon harmonise their fancies, and decipher the hieroglyphic; and this was a thing clearly demonstrated to the Queen Isabella, that Savoisy's horses were oftener stabled at the house of her cousin of Armagnac than in the Hotel St. Pol, where the chamberlain lived, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... windows and sculpture; pointed in form, bold in attitude; communal and bourgeois as political symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art; second transformation of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, immovable and sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, which begins at the return from the crusades, and ends with Louis IX. Notre-Dame de Paris is not of pure Romanesque, like the first; nor of pure Arabian race, like ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... Where once the hieroglyphic bark Told when the warlike bow should twang, The torch of light with glowing spark, Is held ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... doth convey, In a hieroglyphic way, What in noble style like this Our united empire is! The pillars, which support the weight, Are, each of them, a mighty State; Thirteen and more the vista shows, As to vaster length it grows; For ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... showing Grecian proportion and beauty of form under the fourth and fifth dynasties, see Prisse, vol. ii, Art Industriel. As to the philological question, and the development of language in Egypt, with the hieroglyphic sytem of writing, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap. xii; also Lenormanr; also Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, Abbott's translation, 1877. As to the medical papyrus of Berlin, see Brugsch, vol. i, p. 58, but especially the Papyrus Ebers. As ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... wrapper disclosed to view a block of dull yellow virgin gold. The block was about the same shape as, but a little larger than an ordinary English brick, and stamped or moulded on each side was a sign or symbol of hieroglyphic character. ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... Burton's heavily and distinctively written initials RB are written a bit below the middle of the title page, on either side of the printer's device.[32] Also in its typical location at the bottom of the title page is found "a curious mark, a sort of hieroglyphic or cypher," which Burton almost always affixed to his books. The significance of this device remains obscure; it "has usually been supposed to represent the three 'R's' in ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... gods we return later. The myths of the origin of things may be studied without a knowledge of the whole Aztec Pantheon. Our authorities, though numerous, lack complete originality and are occasionally confused. We have first the Aztec monuments and hieroglyphic scrolls, for the most part undeciphered. These merely attest the hideous and cruel character of the deities. Next we have the reports of early missionaries, like Sahagun and Mendieta, of conquerors, like Bernal Diaz, and of ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... most singular; it resembles a greyhound, but has long pointed ears and a short curled tail: a closely allied variety still exists in Northern Africa; for Mr. E. Vernon Harcourt (1/6. 'Sporting in Algeria' page 51.) states that the Arab boar-hound is "an eccentric hieroglyphic animal, such as Cheops once hunted with, somewhat resembling the rough Scotch deer-hound; their tails are curled tight round on their backs, and their ears stick out at right angles." With this most ancient ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... hundred yards of Fenchurch Street Station, a narrow doorway opens into a long whitewashed passage. On one side of this is a brass plate with the inscription "Girdlestone and Co., African Merchants," and above it a curious hieroglyphic supposed to represent a human hand in the act of pointing. Following the guidance of this somewhat ghostly emblem, the wayfarer finds himself in a small square yard surrounded by doors, upon one of which the name of the firm reappears in ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the top of the stone are in the strange old Egyptian picture-writing, which learned men have agreed to call 'Hieroglyphic'; that is, 'writing in pictures.' This was a very special kind of writing in ancient Egypt, and generally kept for important occasions. The lines in the middle give the same words, but in the ordinary ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff

... monuments upon which it is found may, with scarcely an exception, be referred to the preceding period. As this emblem went out of use, owing perhaps to the fact that the Christians were no longer forced to seek concealment for their name and profession, the famous monogram of Christ, [Symbol] the hieroglyphic, not only of his name, but of his cross, succeeded to it, and came, indeed, into far more general use than that which the fish had ever attained. The monogram is hardly to be found before the time of Constantine, and, as it is very frequently met with in the inscriptions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... so, methinks, did CLEOPATRA WOO Her vanquished victor, couched on scented roses, And PHARAOH from his throne With more imperious tone Addressed in some such terms rebellious MOSES; And esoteric priests in Theban shrines, Their ritual conned from hieroglyphic signs, Thus muttered incantations dark and deep To Isis and Osiris, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various

... their eyes on her. None so keen as these young misses to know an inward movement by an outward sign of adornment: if they have not as many signals as the ships that sail the great seas, there is not an end of ribbon or a turn of a ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden meaning to these little cruisers over the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... chapel of Sta. Margherita, in the Church of Sta. Maria delle Grazie at Varallo. This fresco, as Signor Arienta has pointed out to me, contains a strong reminiscence of the architectural background in Raphael's school of Athens; it was painted—so far as an illegible hieroglyphic signature can be taken as read, and so far as internal evidence of style may be relied upon, somewhere about the year. If Gaudenzio was for the moment influenced by Raphael, he soon shook off the influence and formed a style of his own, from which he did not depart, except ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... Gizeh, showing harp and flute players and singers. The position of the hands of the singers—they hold them behind their ears—is a manner of illustrating the act of hearing, and arises from the hieroglyphic double way of putting things; for instance, in writing hieroglyphics the word is often first spelled out, then comes another sign for the pronunciation, then sometimes even two other ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... pure Greek. Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece that of the Mayas? Greek is the off-spring of the Sanscrit. Is Maya? or are they coeval?" Still more surprising is it to find thirteen letters out of the Maya alphabet bearing most distinct relation to the Egyptian hieroglyphic signs for the same letters. It is probable that the earliest form of alphabet was hieroglyphic, "the writing of the Gods," as the Egyptians called it, and that it developed later in Atlantis into the phonetic. It would be natural to assume that the Egyptians ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... back of these solemn statues we shall see that there is a quantity of deeply cut hieroglyphic writing on a great plaque at the back of each. The name of the king himself is always written enclosed in an oblong space called a cartouche; sometimes this cartouche is supported by two cobras, who are supposed to defend it. The rest ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... when he grew weary, when the things about him put on their too ordinary look. Let the aspect of this be what it might, it seemed still inspired and sent forth by some essence of mystery and endless possibility. There was in him an unusual combination of the power to read the hieroglyphic internal aspect of things, and the scientific nature that bows before fact. He knew that the stream was in its second stage when it rose from the earth and rushed past the house, that it was gathered first from the great ocean, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... exquisitely chiselled, almost Greek in its delicacy of outline; and she might indeed have been taken for a Corinthian statue of bronze but for the prominence of her cheek-bones and the slightly African fulness of her lips, which compelled one to recognise her as belonging beyond all doubt to the hieroglyphic race which dwelt upon the ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier

... these chapters will aid to this end, and doubtless many students will find in them the key to unlock the mysteries veiled in symbol and hieroglyphic by ancient writers. The author's object has been to make plain and easy of understanding these subjects. Much, however, has been left for private study and research, for many large volumes might be filled if a detailed description of each ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... most learned of mankind, and Egypt was considered the cradle of the arts and sciences. In her existing monuments, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and tomb paintings, we have presented to us the materials for forming a more correct opinion of the religion and life of the Egyptians than of any other ancient people; and the investigation of these monuments is still adding to our ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... thereof—and shortly afterwards, while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven—and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood—and I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens. And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me—For as the blood of Christ ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner

... convenience to a majority of readers, who naturally will not care to read such a book through at one sitting, but rather to pick it up now and then when in the mood for such light entertainment as it can afford. The spelling has necessarily been changed at times from the antiquated and almost hieroglyphic forms which would defy the most careful typography; but in general the orthography and punctuation are copied verbatim from ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various

... PAGODA PAPER, with the PORCELAIN border, and josses, and jars, and beakers to match; and I can venture to promise one vase of pre-eminent size and beauty. Oh, indubitably! if your la'ship prefers it, you can have the EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHIC PAPER, with the IBIS BORDER to match! The only objection is, one sees it everywhere—quite antediluvian—gone to the hotels even; but, to be sure, if your la'ship has a fancy—At all events, I humbly recommend, what her Grace of Torcaster longs to patronise, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... unite the soul with it; for the thought is unavoidable that it is precisely the absence of the soul which constitutes death. Again: such an explanation of the motive for embalming cannot be correct, because in the hieroglyphic representations of the passage to the judgment the separate soul is often depicted as hovering over the body, 6 or as kneeling before the judges, or as pursuing its adventures through the various realms ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... mediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors, painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have employed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term, as two performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long as their institutions last, alone seems ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... buttoned collar of his blue blouse. Then he succeeded in undoing it and showed his neck. From chin to bosom it was a mass of ghastly bites, some partially healed, more of them recent and yet raw, while the skin, so far as the three Scots could observe it, was covered with a hieroglyphic of scratches, claw marks, and, as it seemed, the bites of some fierce ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... together long had liv'd, In mansion prudently contriv'd; 400 Where neither tree nor house could bar The free detection of a star And nigh an ancient obelisk Was rais'd by him, found out by FISK, On which was a written not in words, 405 But hieroglyphic mute of birds, Many rare pithy saws concerning The worth of astrologic learning. From top of this there hung a rope, To a which he fasten'd telescope; 410 The spectacles with which the stars He reads in smallest characters. It happen'd as a boy, one ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... hieroglyphic state-machine, Contrived to punish fancy in! Men that are men in thee can feel no pain, And all thy insignificants disdain. Contempt, that false new word for shame, Is, without crime, an empty name, A shadow to amuse mankind, But never frights the wise or well-fixed mind: Virtue despises ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... purchased with the MSS., and it is supposed found with them. On the shoulders of the figure is written in hieroglyphic characters the name, with the addition of clerk and friend of Sesostris. It did not occur to ascertain, until M. Champollion was gone, whether the name on the figure was the same with any of those ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... burly baobab, each of whose enormous arms would form the trunk of a large tree, beside groups of graceful palms, which, with their feathery-shaped leaves depicted on the sky, lend their beauty to the scene. As a hieroglyphic they always mean "far from home", for one can never get over their foreign air in a picture or landscape. The silvery mohonono, which in the tropics is in form like the cedar of Lebanon, stands in pleasing contrast with the dark color of the motsouri, whose cypress-form is dotted over at ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... would have made our parting none the lighter. By the time you decipher this hieroglyphic I shall be some miles on my way: Address Hotel de Russie, Berlin. Adieu, Damon; God ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... are the eyes; and when it rises obliquely to the surface the eyes are the first part of the whole animal to emerge. The Egyptians observing this, compared it to the sun rising out of the sea, and made it the hieroglyphic representative of the idea of sunrise. Thus Horus Apollo says: When the Egyptians represent the sunrise, they paint the eye of the crocodile, because it is first seen as that ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... colored illustrations of the divinities, or their symbols, which are spoken of in the chants. These are probably copied from the native hieroglyphic books in which, as we learn from Sahagun, such ancient songs were preserved and transmitted. These illustrations I had copied with scrupulous fidelity and reproduced by one of the photographic processes, for the ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various

... this document was scrawled, in the first place, a rude sketch of a cock's head and comb, with a legend expressing this hieroglyphic to be the sign-manual of Wamba, son of Witless. Under this respectable emblem stood a cross, stated to be the mark of Gurth, the son of Beowulph. Then was written, in rough bold characters, the words, "Le Noir Faineant". And, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... with heathen mythologists had various acceptations (see Vossius, Theologia Gent. et Physiologia Christ.), was also understood as a natural symbol or hieroglyphic of the air. Can any of your learned correspondents furnish materials illustrative of this figurative relation between the serpent and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various

... and Lower Egypt. On it we see a picture of a king performing a religious dance before the god Osiris, who is seated in a shrine placed on a dais. This religious dance was performed by all the kings in later times. Below we find hieroglyphic (ideographic) records of a river expedition to fight the Northerners and of the capture of a fortified town called An. The capture of the town is indicated by a broken line of fortification, half-encircling the name, and the hoe with which the emblematic hawks on the slate reliefs ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... spread, the various names of Phoenician, Ostic, Etruscan, Punic, ancient Greek and Gallic, Celtiberic, Runic, Druidical and others. As a system of notation, it appears to occupy an epoch between the hieroglyphic system of Egypt and the Greek alphabet. But whatever may be said of its origin, affinities, changes, or character, it is clear that this simple alphabet spread westward among the barbaric nations of Europe, changing, in some measure, in its forms of notation ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... hieroglyphic system of writing not as their own invention, but as "the language of the gods." (Lenormant and Cheval, "Anc. Hist. of the East," vol. ii., p. 208.) "The gods" were, doubtless, their highly civilized ancestors—the people of Atlantis—who, as we ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... allowances—some features of luxury and splendour such as we are wont to associate with civilization. The Aztecs, moreover, though doubtless a full ethnical period behind the ancient Egyptians in general advancement, had worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had begun to put it to some literary use. It would seem that a people may in certain special points reach a level of attainment higher than the level which they occupy in other points. The Cave ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... show, like the scenes on a stage: there is nothing real about them. Ships festooned and hung with pennants, firing of cannon, illuminations, beating of drums and blowing of trumpets, shouting and applauding—these are all the outward sign, the pretence and suggestion,—as it were the hieroglyphic,—of joy: but just there, joy is, as a rule, not to be found; it is the only guest who has declined to be present at the festival. Where this guest may really be found, he comes generally without invitation; he is not formerly announced, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... all sides by heavy wooden supports of bluegum and stringy bark, the scarred surfaces of which made them look like the hieroglyphic pillars in old Egyptian temples. The walls were dripping with damp, and the floor of the chamber, though covered with iron plates, was nearly an inch deep with yellow-looking water, discoloured by the clay of the mine. Two miners ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... stood and gazed upon the thing, Lovingly as doting mothers do; Asked, "Does Reggie's hieroglyphic bring Memories of famous men to you— Men who, having made their lives sublime, Left their thumb-prints ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various

... head, for a token that he ought to overtop and outshine others in all commendable qualifications; next, put into his hand a royal sceptre for a symbol of justice and integrity; lastly, clothe him with purple, for an hieroglyphic of a tender love and affection to the commonwealth. If a prince should look upon this portraiture, and draw a comparison between that and himself, certainly he would be ashamed of his ensigns of majesty, and be afraid of being laughed out ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... with the Indians still exists, and the antiquarian may find it among the State records at Albany. It is a curious document, with the signatures of both parties, the patentees' written in the antique French character, with the hieroglyphic marks of the Indians. A few Indian goods—kettles, axes, beads, bars of lead, powder, casks of wine, blankets, needles, awls, and a 'clean pipe'—were the insignificant articles given, about two centuries ago, for these lands, now proverbially rich, and worth ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... the cavalcade. They swung themselves lightly from their saddles, and returned the polite greetings of the generals; the one in fluent German, the other in equally flowing words, but in a language which no one understood, and to which the only answer was a few murmured words, a smile, and hieroglyphic hand-pressures. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... with gold and silver, and the Cordeliers congratulated each other on their rich acquisition. When it came to be opened, they found to their horror that it was filled only with slates, scratched with hieroglyphic and cabalistic characters. Indignant at the insult, they determined to refuse him Christian burial, on pretence that he was a sorcerer. He was, however, honourably buried in Paris, the whole court attending ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... floor, that their laugh was less sonorous, their eye less luminous, than upon those evenings in which the dance had been suddenly improvised, because he had succeeded in electrifying his audience through the magic of his performance. If he electrified them, it was because he repeated, truly in hieroglyphic tones, but yet easily understood by the initiated, the secret whispers which his delicate ear had caught from the reserved yet impassioned hearts, which indeed resemble the Fraxinella, that plant so full of burning and vivid life, that its flowers are ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... be constantly changing, shifting, and, we hope, progressing. After the key to the interpretation of ancient inscriptions has been found, it by no means follows that every word can at once be definitely explained, or every sentence correctly construed. Thus it happens that the same hieroglyphic or cuneiform text is rendered differently by different scholars; nay, that the same scholar proposes a new rendering not many years after his first attempt at a translation has been published. And what applies to the decipherment of inscriptions applies with equal force to the translation ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... a deep breath and took up his fountain pen. He signed with a rapid, illegible scrawl that toward the end of the pile became a mere hieroglyphic. Jonas put his black face in at the door just as he ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... but look, boy, I means this mark for three quarters of a bushel. Mind you recollects it when I axes you, or I'll be blowed if I don't wallop you." But it was only a case of peculiar difficulty which would require a new hieroglyphic, or extract such a long speech from my father. I was well acquainted with his usual scratches and dots, and having a good memory, could put him right when he was puzzled with some misshapen x or z, representing some unknown quantity, like ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... throne stood was of finely wrought stone-work, whereof the whole surface was covered with low-reliefs of men and animals—scenes of battle, of council, and of the chase—surrounded by curious tracery of such orderly design that Fray Antonio agreed with me in the belief that it was some sort of hieroglyphic writing. But this matter is treated of so fully in my Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America that I need not enter upon discussion of ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... chiefly found written on papyrus in hieroglyphic or hieratic characters on coffins, mummies, sepulchral wrappings, statues, and on the walls of tombs. Complete copies have been found written on tombs of the time of the 26th Dynasty ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... alphabet—as all the students of phonetics will tell you—yet, such as it is and has been, we owe it to the old Phoenicians and Egyptians, and in every letter we trace, there lies imbedded the mummy of an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic. ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... returned Miss Susan, with a defiant toss of the head, as she moved toward the dressing-room where they had left their wraps. It was a small apartment, fairly bright and cheery, with here and there a portrait against the wall. Above the dressing-table hung a mirror, diamond-scratched with hieroglyphic scrawls, among which could be discerned a transfixed heart, spitted like a lark on an arrow, and an etching of Lady Gay Spanker, with cork-screw curls. Taglioni, in pencil caricature, her limbs "divinely slender," gyrated on her toes in reckless ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... Iffley." Sure enough, there it exactly was: and a moment's reflection showed me how easily, and with what instinctive fitness, the Norman builders, looking to the Greeks as their absolute masters in sculpture, and recognizing also, during the Crusades, the hieroglyphic use of the zigzag, for water, by the Egyptians, might have adopted this easily attained decoration at once as the sign of the element over which they reigned, and of the power of the Greek goddess who ruled ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... the church, but out in the open long before the church was built, and it towered eighteen feet tall against the sky. There it lived year after year, generation after generation, and nobody knew what its carved birds and beasts and hieroglyphic inscriptions meant. Nobody cared much, until a gloomy set of men in a General Assembly, when Charles I was King of England, threw it down and broke it up, because it was an idolatrous emblem. Luckily, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... does God speak to little children, when made vocal by the services of Christianity, as also he does by darkness wheresoever it is peopled with visions of His almighty power. For a pagan child, for a Greek child, solitude was nothing; for a Christian child it is made the power of God, and the hieroglyphic of His most distant truth. The solitude in life is deep for the millions who have none to love them, and deep for those who suffer by secret and incommunicable woe and have none to pity them. Thus, be you assured that though infancy talks least of that which slumbers deepest, it yet rests ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... of that eminent writer's negative criticisms of early Roman history. But where additional knowledge has enabled us to apply a test to his opinions, as, for instance, respecting the interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphic language, we find that his scepticism led him signally astray. It seems to be assumed that, because the sceptical spirit has its proper function in scientific inquiry (though even here its excesses will often impede progress), therefore its exercise is equally useful and equally ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... Dissenters were alarmed, and the most bigoted of High Churchmen delighted. Then, Defoe's aim being discovered, both parties joined in the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers. 'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He was unabashed, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... the same, Jan. 28.-Reasons for not printing his pamphlet concerning Chatterton. His Hieroglyphic Tales—214 ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... we sent for the doctor, but before he arrived the faintness had passed, so he looked wise at us, like a prize riddle which had to be guessed before his next visit, left us his autograph (a wonderful hieroglyphic), and went away. Since then grandfather has been in the hands of a less taciturn practitioner, whom he calls the 'flower of Glenfaba' (that's me), and after talking nonsense to him all day and playing chess with him all the evening I have to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... in view, it has been decided to publish in the Series several volumes which shall be devoted to the reproduction in hieroglyphic type of the best and most typical examples of the various kinds of Egyptian Literature, with English translations, on a much larger scale than was possible in my "First Steps in Egyptian" or in my "Egyptian Reading Book." These volumes are intended ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge

... fretful or low-spirited at times in the gout, like other weak old men, and have less to boast than most men. I have some strange things in my drawer, even wilder than the Castle of Otranto, and called Hieroglyphic Tales; but they were not written lately, nor in the gout, nor, whatever they may seem, written when I was out of my senses. I showed one or two of them to a person since my recovery, who may have mentioned them, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... now a poor Indian village, though it is said that some remains of the monarch's palace still exist. Apropos to which, we have several times observed, since we entered this state, large stones lying in fields, or employed in fences, with strange hieroglyphic characters engraved on them, some of which ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... mules, he could distinguish the large printed capitals painted on the packages entrusted to his care; he was also able, from long habit, fluently to read the usual announcement of "Vinos y licores finos," inscribed above tavern doors; and, when required, he could even perpetrate a hieroglyphic intended for the signature of his name; but these were the extent of his acquirements. As to deciphering the contents or superscription of the letter now in his possession, he knew that it would be mere lost labour to attempt it. He was far too wary, however, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... his wife as she walked quickly away. He only dimly understood, but he could see the charm of her figure, the delight of the brown curls clustering about her neck, and he again felt that sense of the scholar confronted by the hieroglyphic. He could not have expressed his emotion, but he wondered whether he would ever find the key, and something told him that before she could speak to him his own lips must be unclosed. She had gone into the house by the back kitchen door, leaving it open, and he heard her speaking to the girl ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... but in which the twistings of the one, and the circular outlines of the others might be distinctly traced; and that it seemed ultimately to have passed from a symbol into a mere ornament; as, in earlier instances, hieroglyphic pictures had passed into mere arbitrary signs or characters. I know not what may be thought of the theory of William Ross; but when, in visiting, several years ago, the ancient ruins of Iona, I marked, on the more ancient ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... to which I allude, your precious hours were employed in searching into the very depths of hieroglyphic lore, and you were then almost entirely taken up in putting together the fruits of those your researches, which have since appeared, and astonished the world in that very luminous work, entitled "The Biography of Celebrated Mummies." I have frequently since reflected upon the debt ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... know that to-day we may still find records of these early Bible times in the sculptured monuments which are scattered all over the land, and to know that in the hieroglyphic writings which adorn the walls of tombs or temples many of the events we there ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... but to fright thee, I, to try how thou would'st take it. What! will I turn shark upon my friends, or my friends' friends? I scorn it with my three souls. Come, I love bully Horace as well as thou dost, I: 'tis an honest hieroglyphic. Give me thy wrist, Helicon. Dost thou think I'll second e'er a rhinoceros of them all, against thee, ha? or thy noble Hippocrene, here? I'll turn stager first, and be whipt too: ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... differed even more from what Tess had expected than the house and grounds had differed. She had dreamed of an aged and dignified face, the sublimation of all the d'Urberville lineaments, furrowed with incarnate memories representing in hieroglyphic the centuries of her family's and England's history. But she screwed herself up to the work in hand, since she could not get out ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Hieroglyphic" :   hieratic script, hieroglyph, writing system, hieroglyphical, hieratic, writing, orthography



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