Abstract

This article presents a cross-cultural, diachronic, and comparative analysis of the representational aspects of picture-writing through the use of hieroglyphs in ancient Egypt and their revival in early Renaissance Europe. The two phenomena will be discussed with a focus on the functionality of the sign within the non-textual sphere, highlighting such similarities as the glottographic nature of the word-signs and the subsequent unified visuality of text and image. It is suggested that the similarities are the by-product of picture-writing: when words are expressed with pictograms rather than with letters, the following step is to benefit from their dual function, as both text and image. The current use of pictograms in digital media—namely the emoji—is a process that already exhibits similar traits.

摘要

本文通过在古埃及使用象形文字及其在文艺复兴早期欧洲的复兴，对图画写作的代表性方面进行了跨文化、历时和比较分析。这两种现象将重点讨论符号在非文本领域内的功能，强调诸如单词符号的声门性质以及随后的文本和图像的统一可视性等相似之处。有人认为，相似性是图画书写的副产品：当文字用象形图而不是用字母表示时，接下来的步骤是受益于它们作为文本和图像的双重功能。当前在数字媒体中使用象形图——即表情符号——是一个已经表现出类似特征的过程。