Hieroglyphs are extremely precise. If you don’t write the correct sign then the word is wrong, no matter how you intentioned it. It’s like if I spell my name ‘Charlotte’ with ‘Sh’ rather than ‘Ch’ because they sound the same so ‘any old spelling’ will do.
There’s a very precise way of drawing a snake, you just have to get the right snake for the word you’re using. For example, these are all** the snake hieroglyphs that exist:
**tbh there are more but they’re very set usage so they’re not displayed here
The Egyptians require you to use the specific sign for the the specific word. If the word is ‘cobra’ then use the cobra determinative. If the sign is just ‘snake’ then you use the generic snake sign (two in from the left, one down).
Pls use right snek
Typos are extremely common. People forget that only 2% of the Egyptian people could read and write, which meant that a lot of the Craftsmen were illiterate but expected to copy up texts that they can’t even read to tomb and temple walls. They’ll often mix up the pronouns, or use the wrong ending (plural when it should be single) or even not write the numbers down properly so the text contradicts itself. This can happen even in texts written by well schooled scribes because like everyone on the planet, we all make spelling mistakes. You can often see these mistakes on tomb walls, where either someone who can read hieroglyphs has noticed a mistake in the transcription, or there’s still red paint left behind on a wall from where the chief foreman has marked out where the men needed to carve and then the chief artist has gone round with black paint to mark the final design, often leading to a slight shift in placement. Like this from the unfinished tomb of Horemheb in the Valley of the Kings (KV57):
Or like this (also from the tomb of Horemheb):
You can see it on unfinished stela too:
In texts, which I’ll have to show using Sethe’s Urkunden, you can see how often they occur:
(every time Sethe writes a letter (a,b,c,d etc) it’s where there’s a mistake or not a full writing)
This is what Egyptologists deal with in transcribed texts.
I hope this has explained things for you, and if people enjoyed this post please consider donating to my Ko-Fi page as I do this in my spare time for you guys for free :)
