Translating Hieroglyphs: Language, Meaning, and Philosophy

The Rosetta Stone, inscribed with the same text in hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek, famously helped bridge ancient Egyptian and modern understanding.

Introduction

Translating ancient Egyptian texts is more than a linguistic puzzle – it’s a philosophical adventure. The hieroglyphic writings of pharaohs and priests come from a culture with very different assumptions about language and the world. How can modern translators accurately convey those meanings thousands of years later? To explore this, we can turn to the insights of philosophers and linguists. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas about language and meaning, and Noam Chomsky’s theories of grammar, both offer powerful lenses for understanding what happens when we translate Egyptian hieroglyphs into modern language. Their perspectives – one emphasizing context and use, the other emphasizing universal grammar and syntax – help illuminate the challenges and choices in bringing ancient words to life. In what follows, we’ll examine how the limitations of language, the role of syntax vs. semantics, and the translator’s philosophical assumptions all play a part in interpreting Egypt’s ancient symbols for today’s readers.

The Challenge of Ancient Egyptian Translation

Translating Egyptian hieroglyphs is not as straightforward as converting one word into another. Hieroglyphic writing is an intricate system: it mixes pictorial symbols with phonetic sounds and classifiers that indicate meaning categories. For centuries, these inscriptions baffled scholars. In the 17th century, Athanasius Kircher famously claimed hieroglyphs were sacred symbols that “cannot be translated by words, but [are] expressed only by marks, characters and figures”, essentially deeming them impossible to decipher . Such a view treated hieroglyphs as a mystical, purely ideographic code rather than a normal language – a philosophical assumption about language that delayed true translation. It wasn’t until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone (a trilingual inscription) that Jean-François Champollion in 1822 proved hieroglyphs could be read as a language, not just symbolic art. The Stone’s Greek and Demotic versions of the text provided a bilingual key, revealing that the hieroglyphic signs represented words and sounds, not abstract ideas. This breakthrough showed that ancient Egyptian can be systematically understood with the right approach. Yet, even with the writing system deciphered, translators must reconstruct the ancient Egyptian grammar, context, and worldview to fully capture the meaning of texts. Here is where modern philosophy of language becomes invaluable: it guides us on how meaning is formed and how far translation can go in bridging two worlds.

Wittgenstein: Language, Meaning, and Worldview

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein offers crucial insight into the nature of meaning – insight that is highly relevant when translating texts from an alien time and culture. One of Wittgenstein’s most famous propositions is that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” In other words, the language we speak frames what we can understand or articulate. Ancient Egyptian texts come from a “world” very different from ours; their language has concepts and nuances that may not map neatly onto modern English words. Wittgenstein’s statement alerts us that some aspects of the Egyptian world might lie at or beyond the limits of our language. For example, the Egyptian concept of Maat (encompassing truth, order, and justice in a single idea) has no exact English equivalent – any translation must carefully choose a word or phrase, knowing it only approximates the original idea. This exemplifies what Wittgenstein meant: our world expands when we find words for new concepts, but it contracts when we don’t have such words . A translator often has to stretch the target language, or use explanatory notes, to avoid losing these rich meanings.

Equally famous is Wittgenstein’s remark, “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.”By this he meant that language is interwoven with life experience and context. A talking lion’s words, though in English, would reference a lion’s world of experiences – something humans would likely misunderstand because we don’t share that “form of life.” Now think of an ancient Egyptian priest or scribe “speaking” to us through hieroglyphs: can we truly understand them? Wittgenstein would say we must reconstruct the context – the “form of life” – to grasp meaning. The ancient Egyptians had different daily experiences, social structures, and religious beliefs that shaped how their language conveyed meaning. For instance, when an Egyptian text uses the word for “heart,” it might imply the seat of intellect or emotion in a way that doesn’t exactly match modern notions of heart or mind. The translator must bridge this gap by understanding Egyptian culture (through archaeology, history, comparative anthropology) to interpret the use of that word in context. Indeed, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy (in Philosophical Investigations) argued that “the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” A hieroglyphic word in isolation is ambiguous – is sbA a “star” or a verb “to teach”? Only its use in a sentence (and in a particular text genre, like a funerary spell vs. a scientific text) tells us what it means. Thus, applying Wittgenstein, a good translator doesn’t just match words to dictionary definitions; they ask how was this word used by Egyptians in practice? That approach treats translation as an exercise in understanding ancient Egyptians’ language-games – the way words functioned in their rituals, love poetry, or official decrees – and finding a modern equivalent that plays a similar game.

Wittgenstein also helps us see the limitations of translation. Some meanings might be so rooted in Egyptian life that any translation risks misinterpretation. In these cases, translators sometimes leave the original word (transliterated) or add explanations, effectively acknowledging Wittgenstein’s point that whereof one cannot fully speak in another language, one must find alternate ways (or sometimes “pass over in silence”). Far from being a simple encoding process, translating such terms becomes a philosophical negotiation: how much do we import foreign concepts into our language, and how much do we reshape our language to accommodate them? Every choice reflects a view on whether language primarily pictures reality (early Wittgenstein) or arises from communal life (later Wittgenstein), and translation oscillates between these views.

Chomsky: Universal Grammar and the Skeleton of Language

In contrast to Wittgenstein’s focus on meaning and usage, linguist Noam Chomsky directs our attention to the structure of language – the grammar that underlies any utterance. Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar posits that all human languages share a core set of structural principles, rooted in our biology . What does this mean for translating hieroglyphs? It suggests that ancient Egyptian, while certainly different from English, is not incomprehensibly different – it follows patterns that the human mind can recognize. Indeed, part of Champollion’s success was identifying grammatical patterns: for example, he realized Egyptian often places the verb before the subject (a VSO word order) unlike English’s subject–verb–object order. This is unusual to English speakers, but it’s a perfectly valid option in the universe of human grammar (many languages, like Classical Arabic, do the same). From a Chomskyan perspective, the translator’s first job is to decode the syntax: figure out who is doing what to whom in the Egyptian sentence. The hieroglyphs might omit vowels and have no punctuation, but they do have a structure – and our brains, equipped with universal grammar, can infer roles and relationships. For instance, Egyptian uses specific suffixes on verbs to indicate tense or completed action (e.g., sḏm.n=f “he heard,” where .n= marks past tense). Recognizing these grammatical markers is crucial before we even attach meaning; it’s a step of aligning the Egyptian surface structure with a corresponding English structure.

Chomsky famously illustrated the independence of grammar from meaning with a sentence: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” It’s a grammatically correct English sentence, even though it’s nonsense semantically . The point for translation is profound: getting the grammar right is necessary but not sufficient. A translator could render an Egyptian sentence in perfect English grammar yet still misunderstand its meaning. Conversely, one might grasp the intended meaning but if one fails to convey the grammatical relations, the translation could become garbled. The ideal is to capture both – the syntactical skeleton and the semantic flesh. Chomsky’s work encourages translators to map out the Egyptian sentence’s structure (subjects, verbs, objects, clauses) and then generate an English sentence that preserves those relationships in a natural way. Sometimes this means reordering words or adding function words in English that Egyptian left implicit. For example, Egyptian writing often omitted the verb “to be” – an inscription might literally read “Osiris content” where English needs “Osiris is content.” Recognizing this structural difference, a translator following the principles of grammar will insert the necessary verb to uphold English syntax while conveying the same relationship (subject–predicate) present implicitly in Egyptian.

Moreover, Chomsky’s idea that some grammatical concepts are universal can give translators confidence when dealing with Egyptian constructs that have no direct equivalent in English. For instance, the Egyptian language didn’t mark yes/no questions with a special word like “do” – instead, you could tell a question by context or intonation (which we obviously can’t hear in writing). Yet, the notion of asking a question is universal, so translators know to look for contextual cues (like a question-indicating particle or the situation in the text) and can add “do/does” or rephrase the sentence as a question in English. In this sense, universal grammar acts as a bridge, suggesting that however exotic hieroglyphs appear, the underlying human communication intent is accessible. The translator’s task is akin to what Chomsky describes as moving from deep structure (the core meaning and relations in the original) to surface structure (the expression in the target language).

At the same time, Chomsky’s work also delineates the boundary between syntax and semantics. It reminds us that a translation can fail in subtle ways if we focus on one and not the other. A mechanically literal translation might preserve original word order at the cost of clarity (producing an English sentence as jumbled as “Furiously sleep ideas green colorless,” which Chomsky used as a contrast because it violates English grammar ). Therefore, the translator calibrates grammar and meaning continually, guided by an intuition – perhaps an innate one – about what makes a sentence feel properly structured. In doing so, they are effectively applying a bit of Chomskyan linguistics and a bit of artistic license, ensuring the essence of the ancient text is intelligible without breaking the target language’s rules.

Syntax, Semantics, and the Translator’s Tightrope

Walking the tightrope between syntax (structure) and semantics (meaning) is one of the translator’s most delicate balancing acts. Consider an ancient Egyptian tomb inscription describing a ritual: it might list actions in a string of clauses, each beginning with a verb form, and use imagery-laden terms whose connotations are spiritual. To translate this, one must decide how much to preserve the original syntax for flavor and how much to adjust for clarity. If the Egyptian text says, in literal order, “Reciting prayers the priest – burning incense – anointment happens,” a literal rendering would confuse an English reader. Instead, we might translate it as: “The priest recites prayers, burns incense, and performs anointment.” In doing so, we haven’t lost any key meaning, but we have imposed English syntax (adding conjunctions, ordering the subject “the priest” once at the start) to make it readable. This simple example masks deeper philosophical questions: does altering the structure alter the meaning? Are we as translators justified in such changes, or should we strive to keep the foreignness? Some translation theorists distinguish formal equivalence (retaining form) and dynamic equivalence (emphasizing meaning). Our decisions here reflect what we believe “meaning” truly is – just the raw information conveyed, or the way it was originally expressed.

Wittgenstein might argue that meaning lives in the specific form (use) in the original context, so even rearranging clauses could risk changing the emphasis or nuance. Chomsky, on the other hand, might assure us that as long as the deep structure (who did what, in what sequence) is preserved, the surface differences are secondary. In practice, good translators often take a middle path: preserve distinctive flavors of the original syntax where possible (for instance, the solemn, terse cadence of a royal decree might be hinted at by using formal tone in English), but not at the expense of basic comprehension. If an Egyptian sentence packs three concepts in one relative clause, we might split it into two sentences in English for clarity, accepting a formal loss for a semantic gain.

Semantics itself carries pitfalls. Egyptian hieroglyphs often relied on contextual meaning – a single word like nkht could mean “strong,” “effective,” or “victorious” depending on context. The hieroglyphic script helps a bit: it sometimes includes a determinative sign (a small picture at the end of a word) that isn’t pronounced but tells you the category of meaning – e.g. a determinative of a man walking can indicate the word relates to actions or qualities of a person. This is a clue to meaning that has no direct equivalent in English translation, but the translator uses it behind the scenes. For example, if the word nkht has a little man determinative, we might choose “strong” (a trait of a person) rather than “effective” (which could apply to tools or medicine). Here, we see syntax and semantics intertwine: the writing system’s semantic hints guide the translator’s lexical choices. But once the word is chosen, it must fit the syntax of the sentence being constructed. If the result sounds off (“the king is strong in victory” vs. “the king’s victory is strong” – a subtle difference), we adjust, perhaps by rephrasing to “the king is mighty in victory,” capturing the sense in a way that flows in English. Each tiny edit is a microcosm of the philosophical balance – respecting the semantic content from the source and the syntactic conventions of the target.

Crucially, translation is not a deterministic process; it’s often said to be more art than science, but it is an art informed by science (linguistics) and philosophy. A translator constantly asks: What did this sentence likely mean to its original readers? and How can I create a similar effect or understanding for modern readers? That second question sometimes means reflecting on semantics (choosing the right word with the right connotation) and sometimes on syntax (choosing an active vs. passive construction, or splitting a long sentence). Both Wittgenstein and Chomsky, in their own ways, remind us that neither aspect can be ignored. A beautifully grammatical sentence that betrays the original meaning is a failure; a faithful word-for-word translation that reads like gibberish is also a failure. Success lies in the nuanced middle, guided by linguistic knowledge and a philosophical awareness of what “meaning” entails.

The Limits of Language and Cultural Worldview

Every translation is an act of navigating the limits of language. When dealing with a culture as old and different as ancient Egypt, one inevitably encounters concepts that strain the capacity of the target language to capture them. This is where philosophy of language directly meets practice. Wittgenstein’s notion that the limits of language are the limits of world is evident when translators wrestle with culturally bound terms or practices. For instance, Egyptian texts often make reference to complex religious concepts – consider the various components of the soul in Egyptian thought (ka, ba, akh, etc.). There is no one-to-one correspondence between these and any concepts in modern Western thought. A translator could choose to use the original terms (and explain them in footnotes or glossaries), essentially expanding the reader’s world by teaching them a new concept. Or the translator might pick an imperfect analogous term in English (like “spirit” or “life-force” for ka), which is more immediately understandable but risks altering the meaning subtly. This decision reflects whether one believes language can be stretched to accommodate new ideas, or whether every translation is inevitably a compromise. Translators often find themselves echoing the famous line: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” In translation terms, that could mean opting not to overspecify a term that the original left open or mysterious. If an Egyptian text deliberately uses a poetic ambiguity, a translator may resist the urge to pin it down in concrete English, allowing some productive silence or ambiguity to remain, as much as the target language permits.

Another aspect of language’s limits is how different worldviews and logics can be. Modern philosophical thought has even suggested that the ancient Egyptian worldview might have operated on different logical assumptions. The Egyptologist Erik Hornung, for example, argued that Western binary logic (true/false, either/or) tied to monotheistic tradition was alien to Egyptian thought, which was more inclusive of dualities and ambiguities. Applying our rigid logic to Egyptian texts, he claimed, can produce contradictions that the original authors would never have seen . For a translator, this is a caution: be careful not to inadvertently “resolve” an ambiguity or paradox in the text just because it feels logically puzzling by our standards. An Egyptian hymn might happily describe a deity in seemingly contradictory terms (like “hidden and manifest” at the same time); a translator faithful to the original will render it similarly and let the paradox stand, rather than smoothing it out, because that tension was likely meaningful in the original context. In essence, the translator must sometimes translate a different mindset, not just different words. This is where the task veers into the philosophical – one must ask, what philosophical worldview underpins this text, and how can I respect it in translation?

There is also the classic problem raised by philosopher W.V.O. Quine: the indeterminacy of translation. Quine’s thought experiment of the word “gavagai” (uttered by a native upon seeing a rabbit – does it mean rabbit, or flurry of motion, or undetached rabbit parts?) highlights that without knowing a culture well, any translation of a foreign term is underdetermined. When scholars first attempted to decipher hieroglyphs in the Renaissance, they lacked context and often projected their own ideas – one Renaissance misconception was that hieroglyphs were a pure symbol language of hidden wisdom, leading to wildly imaginative “translations” (more like speculative readings) of Egyptian inscriptions . This is an extreme case, but it underscores that translator bias and assumption fill in when data is sparse. Modern translators of Egyptian have much more data and dictionaries, but they still must occasionally interpret a hapax legomenon (a word that appears only once in surviving texts) or a vague phrase. In doing so, they are guided by what Quine would call a principle of charity – the assumption that the sentence makes sense in some way that aligns with known context or the translator’s own logical framework . For example, if an obscure medical papyrus says something like “to remove pain in the head with the foot of a falcon,” the translator might assume some sense (perhaps a herbal name or symbolic phrase) that prevents it from sounding complete nonsense, essentially choosing an interpretation that makes the text as rational as possible. This principle, while practical, is philosophically loaded: it assumes a common rationality or coherence. But what if the text is meant to be mystical or intentionally esoteric? The translator’s philosophical stance about meaning and rationality will influence whether they normalize the statement or flag it as mysterious.

In sum, the limitations of language manifest as both a barrier and a creative space. They force translators to confront what cannot be easily said and to devise strategies to say it anyway. Ancient Egyptian is full of symbolic language, puns (yes, hieroglyphs often employed visual puns), and cultural references. Each of these can be a “limit” where a literal translation fails. The philosophical translator recognizes these limits – much like Wittgenstein recognized the limits of what can be expressed – and then operates just beyond them, using analogy, explanation, or sometimes leaving certain terms untranslated. By doing so, one hopes to allow the modern reader not just to understand the text, but to glimpse the world behind it. After all, expanding our language to include another culture’s ideas is precisely how we expand our world.

Translation as Philosophy in Practice

Every translation from Ancient Egyptian is also a quiet commentary on what language is and how meaning works. The choices a translator makes echo debates in philosophy of language. Do we prioritize the literal form or the intended function of a statement? This is reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s shift from seeing language as a mirror of reality to seeing it as a tool used in varied ways . A translator might treat an Egyptian text like a mirror, attempting to reflect each element as closely as possible, or like a tool, using whatever English expressions will best achieve the same effect or response that the Egyptian text aimed for. For a general audience, translators often choose the latter approach – and indeed, public philosophy and history works about Ancient Egypt tend to translate in an accessible way, even if that means paraphrasing. For a more academic audience, there might be a closer, more formal translation with footnotes, acknowledging where the English fails to capture a nuance. These differences reflect differing philosophies on what a translation should be: a transparent window into the original (even if the view is a bit foreign and difficult) or a smooth retelling that sacrifices foreignness for clarity.

Thinkers like Noam Chomsky remind us that beneath the diversity of languages there is a shared human capacity – this gives hope that translation is not futile. The fact that we can learn and teach ancient Egyptian at all (it’s taught at universities as a deciphered, grammatical language) is a testament to the structural common ground Chomsky wrote about. We can identify nouns, verbs, adjectives in hieroglyphic texts, conjugate verbs, etc., showing that human minds can bridge a 3,000-year gap in grammatical structure. Meanwhile, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others alert us that grammar alone isn’t enough; meaning is tied to life. So Egyptologists also become, in a sense, anthropologists and philosophers – studying the life, beliefs, and environment of ancient Egyptians to better grasp meanings. For example, when translating spells from the Book of the Dead, understanding Egyptian funerary beliefs (the journey of the soul, the weighing of the heart, etc.) is essential. A translator with that knowledge will choose words that resonate with those concepts (translating Maat as “Truth-order” or “Cosmic Justice” perhaps, rather than a flat “truth”), thereby embedding understanding in the translation itself.

Furthermore, translation choices reflect philosophical assumptions about whether languages can ever truly be equivalent. Some argue that every translation is an interpretation – a stance aligned with hermeneutic philosophers like Gadamer. The translator, in this view, brings their own horizon of understanding and inevitably blends it with the original. Indeed, one scholar noted that a translator’s conceptual scheme (their own logic, semantics, and beliefs) often projects onto the translation until those presuppositions are recognized and adjusted . For instance, early Western translators of Egyptian texts (in the 19th century) often used Biblical-sounding English for ancient hymns (with thee, thou, verily and so on), because they unconsciously assumed a biblical flavor was appropriate for ancient sacred texts. That was a projection of their own cultural style for “holy” language. Today, translators might choose a more neutral or modern register, reflecting a different assumption: that an ancient Egyptian hymn may have been in everyday language of the time, not “King James” English. In doing so, they shift the philosophical stance on how foreign or familiar the ancient text should sound.

Finally, we must acknowledge that translation is also an ethical act. We are speaking for the dead, in a way, putting words into the mouths of those long gone. Philosophically, this raises questions of fidelity and betrayal – the Italian phrase traduttore, traditore (“translator, traitor”) captures the anxiety that in translating we might betray the original author’s intent. Philosophers of language help here by clarifying what “intent” and “meaning” might entail. If meaning is use (Wittgenstein), then as long as the translation is used in a way that is faithful to the original’s use (e.g. a joke is still taken as a joke, a command as a command), we have been faithful. If meaning is a proposition’s truth-conditions (a more analytic view), then as long as we preserve the truth-value of statements (a true statement in Egyptian is rendered as a true statement in English, not a false one), we have been faithful. Either way, the translator engages in a kind of philosophical empathy – trying to inhabit the mind of the ancient writer and the ancient intended audience, and then also the mind of the modern reader, serving as an intermediary. This double perspective is deeply philosophical, requiring one to think about thinking itself, and about how ideas can be transferred across not just language barriers, but conceptual universes.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs carved in stone, depicting both figures and textual symbols. Translating such inscriptions requires attention to artistic context as well as linguistic content.

Conclusion

Translating ancient Egyptian texts is a journey that traverses linguistic structure, cultural context, and philosophical reflection. Through the lens of Wittgenstein, we appreciate that knowing the meaning of Egyptian words demands understanding the world in which those words lived – their use in rituals, commerce, and storytelling. Through the lens of Chomsky, we see that the grammar of Egyptian, once understood, provides a reliable blueprint that can be mapped onto modern language, allowing the skeleton of meaning to hold together across time. In practice, the translator of hieroglyphs becomes a kind of bridge between two language games and two grammars. They must be part linguist, piecing together syntax and morphology, and part philosopher, pondering how meaning can be conveyed and what subtle biases might color the interpretation.

The limitations of language ensure that some mysteries always remain – there will always be an untranslatable pun, a ritual term with no clear modern parallel, or an intentional ambiguity that challenges our binary thinking. But rather than viewing these as failures, we can see them as invitations to deepen our understanding of both languages involved. Each tough translation choice forces us to ask, what does it really mean to convey meaning? In wrestling with an ancient sentence, we clarify our own theories of language and thought. Translation thus becomes a form of philosophy in action, testing theories of meaning and communication in real time. It’s no coincidence that many early decipherers and linguists (from Champollion to modern Egyptologists) have engaged in theoretical reflection – the act of translation drives one to think about thinking.

For the academic and the interested public alike, seeing how translation works through these philosophical lenses can be illuminating. It reminds us that languages are not just codes to be cracked, but worldviews to be entered. The Egyptian hieroglyph for “writing” was a stylized mouth – as if to say writing speaks. When we translate that writing, we are listening across millennia. With thinkers like Wittgenstein and Chomsky as guides, we listen not just for the bare words, but for the meaning behind them and the structure that carries that meaning. In doing so, we honor the spirit of the original texts and gain insight into the nature of language itself. The pharaohs and scribes may have never imagined their words being read through such theoretical frameworks, but by doing so, we ensure that their messages are heard as clearly and thoughtfully as possible in our own time – a dialogue between ancient and modern minds, carried out on the medium of language across the vast ocean of time.

Sources: The insights above draw on Wittgenstein’s view of language’s ties to life and limits , Chomsky’s theories of generative grammar and universal structures of language , as well as historical and modern perspectives on hieroglyphic translation. Notably, Kircher’s early claims about hieroglyphs and Hornung’s suggestion of a different Egyptian logic illustrate how philosophical assumptions can shape (or misshape) our translations. The necessity of understanding use and context echoes Wittgenstein’s famous dictum on meaning as use . In bridging these ideas, we see that translation is both a technical craft and a profoundly philosophical act – one that continues to evolve as we reflect on how best to capture the voices of the past.