Transliteration Of Ancient Egyptian
In the field of Egyptology, transliteration is the process of converting (or mapping) texts written in the Egyptian language to alphabetic symbols representing uniliteral hieroglyphs or their hieratic and Demotic counterparts. This process facilitates the publication of texts where the inclusion of photographs or drawings of an actual Egyptian document is impractical.
It should be emphasised that transliteration is not the same as transcription. Transcription seeks to reproduce the pronunciation of a text. For example, the name of the founder of the Twenty-second dynasty is transliterated as ššnq but transcribed Shoshenq in English, Chéchanq in French, Sjesjonk in Dutch, and Scheschonq in German.
Due to the exact details regarding the phonetics of ancient Egyptian not being completely known, most transcriptions depend on Coptic for reconstruction or are theoretical in nature. Egyptologists, therefore, rely on transliteration in scientific publications.
Read more about Transliteration Of Ancient Egyptian: Standards, Electronic Transliteration
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