Visual Aesthetics of Ancient Egyptian Writing

This volume explores ancient Egyptian writing systems – one of the richest and most enduring image-writing systems in history – from the perspective of its visual aesthetics, rather than from a linguistic or philological perspective.

Marking two hundred years since the decipherment of hieroglyphics, it stands as a unique work celebrating this milestone through a renewed focus on the visual dimensions of ancient Egyptian writing. Traditional scholarly approaches in Egyptology often prioritise the linguistic and philological analysis of ancient Egyptian writings over their visual aspects. This volume ushers in a new wave of scholarship focused on rediscovering the visual aesthetics of ancient Egyptian writing, with examples drawn from across the ancient history of Egypt highlighting the visual, artistic, and stylistic elements employed in the creation and presentation of hieroglyphs and their cursive forms such as the hieratic script. These visual aspects encompass diverse essential elements contributing to the overall beauty, harmony, and expressive qualities of written texts in ancient Egypt.

Visual Aesthetics of Ancient Egyptian Writing is suitable for students and scholars of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian art and visual culture, and ancient writing systems more broadly. It is also of interest to those working on comparative aesthetics, and comparative poetics, as well as to those working in comparative philosophy, and textual hermeneutics.