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.
Gardiner lists only the most common forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but he includes extensive subcategories, and also both vertical and horizontal forms for many hieroglyphs. He includes size-variation forms to aid with the reading of hieroglyphs in running blocks of text. (The Budge Reference has about 1000 hieroglyphs listed in 50 pages, but with no size varieties.)
Unfortunately he does not cross index signs, once put on the list, other significant uses may be overlooked. One example of this is G16, nbtỉ, the ideogram for The Two Ladies, goddesses Wadjet as cobra and Nekhbet as the white vulture. These are the protecting and patron goddesses of the separate Egyptian kingdoms that joined into Ancient Egypt, who were both then displayed on the uraeus of Wadjet when the unification occurred and afterward considered jointly to be the protectors of Egypt and the pharaohs. This ideogram is listed only on the bird list as G16, and overlooked on the deity list and the reptile list.
Other subcategories included by Gardiner are abbreviations and personalized forms, and also a complete subset, used on papyrus, specifically for the Book of the Dead.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list and/or hieroglyphs:
“The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)
“We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The feet of the rats
scribble on the doorsills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)