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

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

 sign listed no. G43 for the quail chick.

The quail chick hieroglyph is used in the Ancient Egyptian language
Egyptian language
Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...

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

s for the alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...

ic vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

 letter w, (or the u). The vocalization is between the "oo", for 'u'; the "woo", for 'w'.

Plural usage

Besides the alphabetic usage, (of 'oo', or 'woo'), the plural usage of the quail chick, and coil hieroglyphs may have driven the extensive use of the two hieroglyphs. They often are used as a determinative
Determinative
A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may derive historically from glyphs for real words, and...

, for making a plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

 at word endings, or at important sections of word phrases. Just as in cuneiform
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...

, both scripts had two versions of plurals – cuneiform used: MEŠ, and HI.A, sumerogram
Sumerogram
A Sumerogram is the use of a Sumerian cuneiform character or group of characters as an ideogram or logogram rather than a syllabogram in the graphic representation of a language other than Sumerian, such as Akkadian or Hittite....

 forms.

The Egyptian hieroglyph alphabetic letters

The following two tables show the Egyptian uniliteral signs. (24 letters, but multiple use hieroglyphs)
a
G1
i
M17
y
M17-M17
'
D36
(w,u)
G43
B
b
P
p
F
f
M
G17
N
N35
R
D21
H1
h
H2
H
Kh1
Aa1
Kh2
F32
S
O34
(Sh)=Š
N37
Q/K2
N29
K
k
G
g
T
t
ChTj
V13
D
d
Dj
I10
L/(R)
(special)
(Ptolemaic,
etc.)
E23
-- -- -- -- --

a i
(ee)
y
ii
'
ah, (aïn)
w, (u)
(oo)
B
P F M N R H1
H2 (Kh)1 (Kh)2 S Sh
(Sh)
K
emphatic
K G T Tj
Ch
Tsh
D Dj
(additionally 4
for vert/horiz)
-- -- -- -- --
M
(horiz)
M2-Plinth
N
(vert)
(see:
N (red crown))
S
(vert)
S (folded
cloth)
M
(3rd-M
-2nd-vert)
M3-Baker's tool
(additionally 3
for equivalents)
-- -- -- -- --
M17-M17-(2-reeds)
is—Z4-(2-strokes)
y2-Two strokes
G43-(quail)
is—Z7-(coil)
letter w, u
(see w2-Coil)
T
(no. 2)
T2-Pestle
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