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Hieroglyphic   /hˌaɪroʊglˈɪfɪk/   Listen
Hieroglyphic

noun
1.
Writing that resembles hieroglyphics (usually by being illegible).  Synonym: hieroglyph.
2.
A writing system using picture symbols; used in ancient Egypt.  Synonym: hieroglyph.






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"Hieroglyphic" Quotes from Famous Books



... he was about to mount and start on his dangerous mission, "Athos, for generosity, is a hero of romance; Porthos has an excellent disposition, but is easily influenced; Aramis has a hieroglyphic countenance, always illegible. What will come out of those three elements when I am no longer present to combine them? The deliverance of the cardinal, perhaps. Now, the deliverance of the cardinal would be the ruin of our hopes; and our hopes are thus far the ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... 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 ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner

... face,—that mysterious tome printed with care, with 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 that look as if they deemed the stream of all human happiness flowed only from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... he said, "but how about this hieroglyphic? Do you think anybody on earth is capable of reading ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... 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 to be With thy—now spotted—spotless majesty, Be sure ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... him his fellowship in the Royal Society; but again he played the coquette with his subject, and after a year's absence from the laboratory he joined the Oriental Society, and delivered a paper on the Hieroglyphic and Demotic inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a crowning example both of the versatility and of the inconstancy of ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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." ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... the palm of his hand to be seen; a reluctance which common fame attributed to the fact of his having received on that part the impress of a hot iron, in the shape of the letter T, not forgetting to add, that T was the hieroglyphic for Thief. The villain himself affirmed it was simply the mark of a cross, burned into it by a blessed friar, as a charm against St. Vitus's dance, to which he had once been subject. The people, however, were ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... were reputed the 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 ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... one whose qualification for leadership is, that he is 'Madman and Beggar, too,'—for as Gloster explains it to us, explaining also at the same time much else that the scenic language of the play, the dumb show, the transitory hieroglyphic of it presents, and ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... 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 as ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... round with triangular leaves. The top is surrounded by three or five bands. A moulding composed of groups of three vertical stripes hangs like a fringe from the lowest band in the space between every two stems. So varied a surface does not admit of hieroglyphic decoration; therefore the projections were by degrees suppressed, and the whole shaft was made smooth. In the hypostyle hall at Gurneh, the shaft is divided in three parts, the middle one being smooth and covered with sculptures, while the upper and lower divisions are formed of clustered ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... mind Like our own Sanctuary, where no ray But by the Priest's permission wins its way— Where thro' the gloom as wave our wizard rods. Monsters at will are conjured into Gods; While Reason like a grave-faced mummy stands With her arms swathed in hieroglyphic bands. But chiefly in that skill with which we use Man's wildest passions for Religion's views, Yoking them to her car like fiery steeds, Lies the main art in which our craft succeeds. And oh be blest, ye men of yore, whose toil Hath, for our use, scooped out from Egypt's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... endless water 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, through ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... surpasseth human understanding, and to which, standing in the Middle Chamber, after his laborious ascent of the winding stairs, he can only approximate by the reception of an imperfect, yet glorious reward in the revelation of that "hieroglyphic light which none but ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh

... birth of the modern satirical print—that is to say, in the reign of Charles I.—we see it called "A Mad Designe;" eighty years later, when George II. was King, it was known as a "hieroglyphic;" and then onwards, through the caustic and venomous days of the mighty Gillray and Rowlandson, and even of George Cruikshank, and their contemporaries, "caricature" was the term applied to the separate copper-plate ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... 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 noble half-breeds, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... to study 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, since the destruction of his residence, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... hard stone. Rings, crosses and other signs drawn in blue pigment on some of the rocks, and believed to be one or two centuries old, have given rise to the erroneous speculation that these may be remains of a hieroglyphic writing. A discovery of drawings of men and women with antelope heads was made in the recesses of the Drakensberg in 1873 (J.M. Orpen in Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874). A few years later Selous discovered similar rock-paintings ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic[210] by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... quantity of meaning which probably lies hidden in any composition, as well as in the simplicity with which he will probably treat it, in order to enforce or guide to this meaning: the figures being often letters of a hieroglyphic, which he will not multiply, lest he should lose in force of suggestion what he ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin

... warmth of summer and frost of winter, drought and rain, these and many other happenings leave a subtle impression on the life of the plant. By invention of apparatus of extreme delicacy, it is possible to make the plant itself write down the history of its own experience in a hieroglyphic which it is possible to decipher. From these pages, taken from the diary of the plant, it will perhaps be possible some day to get an insight into the great mystery that surrounds life itself. For I shall in the course of lectures given here show how the life of plants is a mere reflection ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... comparison is instructive. We have no means of testing the value 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), ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... well," said Herlton cheerfully, scribbling a hieroglyphic in his book; "that branch of business is rather outside my line—too little in it, and the gratitude of author and publisher for being introduced to one another is usually short-lived. A more serious entry was the ...
— When William Came • Saki

... 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 ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... they stopped for a short time that Rhoda might eat. Their resting-place was in the shadow of a beetling, weather-beaten rock that still bore traces of hieroglyphic carvings. There were broken bits of clay pots among the tufts of cactus. Rhoda stared at them languidly and wondered what the forgotten vessels could have contained in a region so barren of life ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... middle. In Philos and Licia, 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

... and naturalist, Thomas Young, who also occupied himself with the three various texts, made better progress. Taking advantage and making use of the parts that had been revealed to him by demotic and hieroglyphic text, he succeeded, in a mechanical way, and by intelligent comparisons in deciphering the names Ptolemaios and Berenike, and in recognizing even the hieroglyphic signs for numbers. Still the true nature of the Egyptian writing was not revealed to him either. In their particulars his ascertainments ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... oppressors; but on the other hand, hopeless failure for the insurrection, and certain death for him. What a watch he must have kept that night! To that excited imagination, which had always seen spirits in the sky and blood-drops on the corn and hieroglyphic marks on the dry leaves, how full the lonely forest must have been of signs and solemn warnings! Alone with the fox's bark, the rabbit's rustle, and the screech-owl's scream, the self-appointed prophet brooded over his despair. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... already quoted,[42] Sahagun imparts the interesting information that the more important songs were written down by the Nahuas in their books, and from these taught to the youth in the schools. A certain branch of the Mexican hieroglyphic writing was largely phonetic, constructed on that method to which I have applied the adjective ikonomatic, and by which it was quite possible to preserve the sound as well as the sense of sentences and verses.[43] Such attention could have been bestowed only on the sacred, royal, ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton

... the director of customs, and of the civil and military intendant, as headquarters of the officer commanding, and, moreover, as hotel and wine and spirit store. Alongside the board, on which was depicted a sort of hieroglyphic, intended for the Mexican eagle, hung a bottle doing duty as a sign, and the republican banner threw its protecting shadow over an announcement of—"Brandy, Whisky, and Accommodation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... it is to 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

... the day before there had 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 ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... willow's careful gray, Where rev'rend Cam cuts out his famous way, The melancholy Cowley lay; And, lo! a Muse appeared to his closed sight (The Muses oft in lands of vision play,) Bodied, arrayed, and seen by an internal light: A golden harp with silver strings she bore, A wondrous hieroglyphic robe she wore, In which all colours and all figures were That Nature or that Fancy can create. That Art can never imitate, And with loose pride it wantoned in the air, In such a dress, in such ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... generally died with their inventors. Whence arose the policy, which still continues in Indostan, of obliging the son to practice the profession of his father. After the discovery of letters, the facts of Astronomy and Chemistry became recorded in written language, though the antient hieroglyphic characters for the planets and metals continue in use at this day. The antiquity of the invention of music, of astronomical observations, and the manufacture of Gold and Iron, are recorded ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... upon his left arm with the royal crest and the crossed flags of the two nations." Only Peter Atherly and his sister understood the sting inflicted either by accident or design in the latter sentence. Both he and his sister had some singular hieroglyphic branded on their arms,—probably a reminiscence of their life on the plains in their infant Indian captivity. But there was no mistaking the general sentiment. The criticisms of a small town may become inevasible. Atherly determined to take the first opportunity to leave Rough and ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive bravely; and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, some Letters in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... 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, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... in our breasts a genuine response to the mighty aspirations which thus became incarnate in enduring stone. And the poem of Dante—which has been well likened to a great cathedral—we reverently accept, with all its quaint carvings and hieroglyphic symbols, as the authentic utterance of feelings which still exist, though they no longer choose the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... mode of representing them; but, since the pomegranate, and some other fruit trees, are drawn with spreading and irregular branches, it is possible that sycamores, and others, which presented large masses of foliage, were really trained in that formal manner, though, from the hieroglyphic signifying "tree" having the same shape, we may conclude it was only a ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... the palace of his art. Nor is this all; for since these blocks or words are the acknowledged currency of our daily affairs, there are here possible none of those suppressions by which other arts obtain relief, continuity, and vigour: no hieroglyphic touch, no smoothed impasto, no inscrutable shadow, as in painting; no blank wall, as in architecture; but every word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph must move in a logical progression, and convey a ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... crocodiles, which we found traced upon the rocks in spots now uninhabited, appeared to me in no way to denote the objects of worship of those nations. Between the banks of the Cassiquiare and the Orinoco, between Encaramada, the Capuchino, and Caycara, these hieroglyphic figures are often seen at great heights, on rocky cliffs which could be accessible only by constructing very lofty scaffolds. When the natives are asked how those figures could have been sculptured, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... which neither of them had ever before experienced, that they sat and watched Pearl's slow advance. In her was visible the tie that united them. She had been offered to the world, these seven past years, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide—all written in this symbol—all plainly manifest—had there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the character of flame! And Pearl was the oneness of their being. Be the foregone evil what ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... tropical or symbolic: which were, however, used together in the same record. In Egypt, written language underwent a further differentiation: whence resulted the hieratic and the epistolographic or enchorial: both of which are derived from the original hieroglyphic. At the same time we find that for the expression of proper names which could not be otherwise conveyed, phonetic symbols were employed; and though it is alleged that the Egyptians never actually achieved complete alphabetic writing, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... DEECKE, entitled Der Ursprung der Kyprischen Sylbenschrift, eine palaeographische Untersuchung, Strasbourg, 1877. Another hypothesis has been lately started, and an attempt made to affiliate the Cypriot syllabary to the as yet little understood hieroglyphic system of the Hittites. See a paper by Professor A. H. SAYCE, A Forgotten Empire in Asia Minor, in No. 608 of ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... nothing more than a concealment of the letters. Where there is any approach to hieroglyphic writing, or syllabic ciphers, I ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... to light at Tell el Amarna bearing the hieroglyphic names of King Amenophis IV. and his father, Amenophis III. These had evidently served as lids to the chests. Some tablets also were inscribed with notes in hieratic, written in red ink. But in spite of these exceptions, it was at once ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr

... memory. "I can't write nor read, Jacob," he would say; "I wish I could; 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

... 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 the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... Champollion deciphering the Rosetta Stone, or Rawlinson copying the cuneiform inscription on the cliff of Behistun, was ever faced by a more fascinating problem than that which confronts the solar physicist engaged in the interpretation of the hieroglyphic lines of sun-spot spectra. The colossal whirling storms that constitute sun-spots, so vast that the earth would make but a moment's scant mouthful for them, differ materially from the general light of the sun when examined with the spectroscope. Observing them visually many years ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... time whom did it represent? King Amenemhat? The Sun God? Who can rightly tell? Of all hieroglyphic images it remains the one least understood. The unfathomable thinkers of Egypt symbolised everything for the benefit of the uninitiated under the form of awe-inspiring figures of the gods; and it may be, perhaps, that, after having meditated so deeply ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... person for finding them I ever heard of. I'm going to carve one on the tree, here by this last notch under the date. It will be quite neat and symbolical, don't you think? A sort of 'when this you see remember me' hieroglyphic. It will remind you of the long discussions we've had on the subject since we read ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston

... I heard a voice saying, 'Such is your luck, such you are called to see and let it come rough or smooth you must surely bear it,'"[2] This happened in 1825. He said he discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven, that he found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in the blood and representing the figures he had previously seen in the heavens.[3] These were without doubt creatures of Nat Turner's own imagination made by him with coloring matter to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... so like a tile, A sadden view it would beguile: The upper part whereof was whey, The nether orange mixt with grey. This hairy meteor did denounce The fall of sceptres and of crowns; With grisly type did represent Declining age of government, And tell, with hieroglyphic spade, Its own grave and the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

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

... that every great national architecture has been the result and exponent of a great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits there—you must have it everywhere or nowhere. It is not the monopoly of a clerical company—it is not the exponent of a theological dogma—it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood; it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... is one of the 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 variety a pariah-like ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... 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 do not go naked as they ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... Mediaeval Period," the "Coin Collector's Manual," the "Coinage of the British Empire," "Stories by an Archaeologist," and especially his magna opera, so to speak, "The Art of Illumination," and "The History of the Art of Writing from the Hieroglyphic Period down to ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... and meagre as it is, may do very well for the 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 ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... and dignity which frowns with superlative contempt upon every thing very vulgar—for she says "she sublimely detests them very low creatures what are never brought up to manners at the north, and are worse than haystacks to larn civility"—my lady solicits a near inspection of this wonderful hieroglyphic, which she tells us is the family arms,—an ancient and choice bit of art she would not part with for the world. If her friends evince any want of perception in tracing the many deeds of valour it heralds, on behalf of the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... suggestion of human form to the best of an inferior organism; secondly, because their constant practice in solid sculpture, often colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science into the treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome vase, or shallow hieroglyphic. ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... any rate, there was, in the Royal Library at Madrid, a Mexican hieroglyphic work, "all painted," with a translation apparently into the Nahuatl tongue.[25] I would inquire of the learned linguists of Spain whether that document cannot be unearthed. And further, I would ask whether all trace has been lost of the ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton

... 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 ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... 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 every where—quite antediluvian—gone to the hotels even; but, to be sure, if your la'ship has a fancy—at all events, I humbly recommend, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... that we approach a region, into which we cannot penetrate without stepping through a border of perfect darkness. We allude to the introduction of the Glagolitic alphabet; the great antiquity of which, supported by numerous traditions and legends, as well as by its venerable and almost hieroglyphic look, Kopitar's recent investigations and discoveries have again made probable; without, however, throwing any ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... 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, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... 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 ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... 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 be content with merely ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... 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 ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... dead had to undergo a transmigration. That it was actually worshipped is attested by a sepulchral tablet of the 26th dynasty, about 700 B.C., in which it is figured standing on a small chapel over which are the hieroglyphic words, "The good goose greatly beloved;" and on the lower part of the tablet the dedicator makes an offering of fire and water to "Ammon and the Goose."—Revue ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... extended. It had, as these changes progressed and the family of man 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 and ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... 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

... seem'd rough-cast before, Search his deep sense, unveil his hidden mirth, And make that fiery which before seem'd earth (Conquering those things of highest consequence, What's difficult of language or of sense), He will appear some noble table writ In the old Egyptian hieroglyphic wit; Where, though you monsters and grotescoes see, You meet all mysteries of philosophy. For he was wise and sovereignly bred To know what mankind is, how 't may be led: He stoop'd unto them, like that ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... wrote a hieroglyphic of her own before half-a-dozen of the dances, especially those just then coming into fashion, the waltz and the Bohemian polka a deux temps. Then, having assured her position, she began her struggle with the Arlington. She had never seen the lady ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... through the white curtain of Zenobia's drawing-room. The shadow of a passing figure was now and then cast upon this medium, but with too vague an outline for even my adventurous conjectures to read the hieroglyphic that ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that the 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

... me, I have gone too far; I must not provoke honest Albumazar: —an Egyptian mummy is an illustrious creature, my trusty hieroglyphic; and may have significations of futurity about him; odsbud, I would my son were an Egyptian mummy for thy sake. What, thou art not angry for a jest, my good Haly? I reverence the sun, moon and stars with all my heart. What, I'll make thee a present ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... it readily. "My eyes may be good," he observed, after a long pause, "but my detective powers are not. The m's and n's are all alike, and so are most of the other letters. She's an economical person—she makes the same hieroglyphic do duty for both a ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... Kephala site from one of the joint proprietors, nothing of any real moment had been accomplished. Dr. Evans had been attracted to Crete by the purchase at Athens of some seal-stones found in the island, engraved with hieroglyphic and linear signs differing from Egyptian and Hittite characters. In the hope that he might be led to the discovery of a Cretan system of writing, and relying upon the ancient Cretan tradition that the Phoenicians had ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... place our Cathedral in that other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in painted 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, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... avenue flanked by six colossal figures, which measure six feet and a half from the ground to the knees. They are representations of Isis and Osiris, in various attitudes. The sides and capitals of the pillars are covered with paintings or hieroglyphic carvings, in which Burckhardt thought a very ancient style was to be traced. All these are hewn out of the rock, and the faces appear to have been painted yellow, with black hair. Two hundred yards from this temple are the ruins of a still larger monument, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... reproduced my mistress's beauty and my love's significance. Having learned the language of nature, I translated from her hieroglyphic pages in characters of flame. With rash hands I stripped false seemings from material beauty, and limned the naked divinity of Idea. Shorn by degrees in my strife of youth and strength and passion, I wound them in my work—toiling like paltry ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... reputation, have been led to suppose that, in the Chinese character, they could trace some relation to those hieroglyphical or sacred inscriptions found among the remains of the ancient Egyptians; others have considered it to be a modification of hieroglyphic writing, and that each character was the symbol or comprehensive form of the idea it was meant to express, or, in other words, an abstract delineation of the object intended to be represented. To strengthen such an opinion, they have ingeniously selected a few instances where, by adding ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... all things, beasts and plants and stars. He applied the words, "Whatsoever ye do to the least of my brethren, ye have done unto me," to Brother Bear and his sisters the little birds. He was one of the first men, since the Greek era, who saw nature in its true aspect and not as a hieroglyphic of the divine word. Men had realised with a feeling of helplessness the dangers of the elements, without perceiving their magnificence; they had speculated on and attempted to decipher the secret language of the terrestrial and celestial phenomena. The discovery ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... the honest cabman and the hieroglyphic letter which he turned over to me? Here it is, addressed, as you ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... reaches "Pier 2." He is now the captain of the Ocean Steam Navigation Company's vessel, San Jacinto, and on April 22 he writes, "My own darling good wife," before sailing, advising her to take good care of herself. The usual circular, hieroglyphic and osculatory invitation appears at the lower ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... at these matters is perfectly right and reasonable, so long as we bear in mind that it is a facon de parler, a sort of hieroglyphic which shall stand for the course of nature, but nothing more. Repair (as is now universally admitted by physiologists) is only a phase of reproduction, or rather reproduction and repair are only phases of the same power; and ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... these colours are modified and altered in all varieties, corresponding to the mood of the day and hour, as well as the season of the year; and sometimes I found the various colours so intermingled, that I could not determine even the season, though doubtless the hieroglyphic could be deciphered by more experienced eyes. One splendour, in particular, I remember—wings of deep carmine, with an inner down of warm gray, around a ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... creations,—all the existences, too, of the present creation that occur in the fossil or semi-fossil form; and, thus coextensive in space with the earth's surface,—nay, greatly more than coextensive with the earth's surface,—for in the vast hieroglyphic record which our globe composes, page lies beneath page, and inscription covers over inscription,—coextensive, too, in time, with every period in the terrestrial history since being first began upon our planet,—it presents to the student a theme so vast and multifarious, that it might ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... 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 ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... hospitium sine muscis, an entertainment without flies; and in another place of the same author, an inquisitive and busy man, who pries and insinuates himself into the secrets of others, is termed musca. We are likewise informed by Horus Apollo, that in Egypt a fly was the hieroglyphic of an impudent man, because that insect being beaten away, still returns again; on which account it is that Homer makes it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various

... it, thus seeing it where another will not see it, and giving it the preference as among things to be preserved and rendered amid the wholesale slaughter of innocents which is inevitable in any painting. Painting is only possible as a quasi-hieroglyphic epitomising of nature; this means that the half goes for the whole, whereon the question arises which half is to be taken and which made to go? The colourist will insist by preference on the coloured half, the man who has no liking for colour, however much ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... so vast and so many-sided that it may receive contributions in very diverse forms. The invention of the hieroglyphic system of writing is among the leading achievements of ancient Egypt, but the art and literature of Greece have been no less conspicuous in the onward sweep of human progress. The promotion of the science of navigation by the Phoenicians, ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... usual and direct means by which artists express their inspirations and appeal to the sympathies of men, distinct from the common language of Art, which contents itself with conveying merely local and individual ideas, abstract lines are recognized as the grand hieroglyphic symbolism of the aggregate of human thought, the artistic manifestations of the great human Cosmos. The natural world, passing through the mind of man, is immediately interpreted and humanized by his creative power, and assumes the colors, forms, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... 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: dost ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... console himself with the thought that he was not quite such an ass as Larry Lefferts, nor May such a simpleton as poor Gertrude; but the difference was after all one of intelligence and not of standards. In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs; as when Mrs. Welland, who knew exactly why Archer had pressed her to announce her daughter's engagement at the Beaufort ball (and had indeed expected ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... guessed; to judge by the small squat head, and still more by a thing like a tail or extra limb turned up behind and pointing, like a loathsome large finger, at some symbol graven in the centre of the vast stone back. I had begun, in the dim light, to guess at the hieroglyphic, not without horror, when a more horrible thing happened. A door opened silently in the temple wall behind me and a man came out, with a brown face and a black coat. He had a carved smile on his face, of copper flesh and ivory teeth; but I think the most ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... 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 ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various

... Fergussen's work. This tree-worship may have taken a dark form when associated with the Draconian one; or opposed, as in Judea, to a purer faith; but in itself, I believe, it was always healthy, and though it retains little definite hieroglyphic power in subsequent religion, it becomes, instead of symbolic, real; the flowers and trees are themselves beheld and beloved with a half-worshipping delight, which is always noble ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... 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 ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... illness seizing grandfather. He had been taken with a sudden faintness. Of course 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 ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... which seem to 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 ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... observation proves to be strictly true. But wonderful as is all this, we are not reduced to any such necessity with regard to the future of the gospel. We have not to take a few dark sayings, or enigmatical expressions, or hieroglyphic inscriptions, and as we best may spell out the universal spread of truth. As with the light of a sunbeam, or with "the point of a diamond," is it revealed. He that runs may read. Abraham saw it: "And in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Jacob saw it: "The sceptre shall ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... the reign of Semti, King of Upper 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 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... queer about this," he said, "and I don't know that I ought to go on with it; it strikes me very forcibly that an attempt is being made to forge a Russian note and that this is a part of the process." The lines on the paper made a sort of hieroglyphic puzzle which it was quite impossible to decipher. I asked him what he intended to do with it and he answered that he would fulfil his order and set the police upon the track of the people who had given it. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... laugh at every thing; for then we should hear much lamentation and much laughter." When the assembly broke up, they gave the three novitiates the insignia of their authority, which were copper plates, on which were engraved some hieroglyphic characters; with which they took their leave ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... the Tzendals. Previous to his arrival they were ignorant, barbarous, and without fixed habitations. He collected them into villages, taught them how to cultivate the maize and cotton, and invented the hieroglyphic signs, which they learned to carve on the walls of their temples. It is even said that he wrote his own ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... province is a Register to record the memorable Acts, extraordinary qualities and worthy endowments of mind of the most eminent Patricians. Where for the Escutcheon of Pretence each noble person bears the Hieroglyphic of that vertue he is famous for. E.G. If eminent for Courage, the Lion; If for Innocence, the White Lamb; If for Chastity, a Turtle; If for Charity, the Sun in his full glory; If for Temperance, a slender Virgin, girt, having a bridle in her mouth; If for Justice, she holds a Sword in ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... the prescription." He jotted down on a card a few hieroglyphic phrases. "And now I must hurry away. I'm sorry, but ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... guidance—two pages for Juste and three for me—full of invaluable advice—the sort of information which experience alone can supply, such landmarks as only genius can place. In those papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a fortune, and forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of America and Asia which have been fully justified, both before and since Juste and I could ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac

... "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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various

... remind the reader that the Assyrians called the Nile-valley "Musur" whence probably the Heb. Misraim a dual form denoting Upper and Lower Egypt which are still distinguished by the Arabs into Sa'id and Misr. The hieroglyphic term is Ta-meraLand of the Flood; and the Greek Aigyptos is probably derived from Kahi-Ptah (region of the great God Ptah) or Ma Ka Ptah (House of the soul of Ptah). The word "Cops" or "Kopt," in Egyptian "Kubti" and pronounced ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... fractures on the wall, Assuming features solemn and terrific, Hinted some Tragedy of that old Hall, Lock'd up in hieroglyphic. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... All poetry praised by critics now-a-days is as hard to understand as a hieroglyphic. I own a weakness for Pope and common sense. I could keep up with our age as far as Byron; after him I was thrown out. However, Arthur was declared by the critics to be a great improvement on Byron—more 'poetical in form'—more 'aesthetically artistic'—more ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... tortuously do the methods of the profession adapt themselves to the modern conception of an army of devoted men working as a whole under God for the health of mankind as a whole, broadening out from the frowsy den of the "leech," with its crocodile and bottles and hieroglyphic prescriptions, to a skilled and illuminating co-operation with those who deal with the food and housing and economic life of ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... performed some brave action, such as killing an enemy, and bringing off his scalp. Those who have signalized themselves by some gallant exploit, cause a tomahawk to be pricked on their left shoulder, underneath which is also pricked the hieroglyphic sign of the conquered nation. Whatever figure they intend to prick, is first traced on the skin with a bit of charcoal, and having fixed six needles in a piece of wood in two rows, in such a manner that they only stick out about the tenth part of an inch, they prick the skin all over the mark, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... specimens in a collection of antiquities which had belonged to an old Mexican, who got them principally from the suburb of Tlatelolco, in the neighbourhood of the ancient market-place of the city. Such axes were certainly common among the ancient Mexicans. One of the items of the hieroglyphic tribute-roll in the Mendoza Codex ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... readjustment. But Michael Petrovitch Gregoriev, who, it might have been thought, had good cause for apprehension, came down from his bedroom at the usual hour, shut himself into his sanctum, sat down to stare thoughtfully at a certain portion of his hieroglyphic map, and then, with a deep, relieving sigh, fared vigorously forth to the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... met your social band, And spent the cheerful, festive night; Oft honour'd with supreme command, Presided o'er the sons of light: And by that hieroglyphic bright, Which none but craftsmen ever saw! Strong mem'ry on my heart shall write Those ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham



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



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