The Manuel de Codage is a standard system for the computer-encoding of transliterations

Transliteration of ancient Egyptian

In the field of Egyptology, transliteration is the process of converting texts written in the Egyptian language to alphabetic symbols representing uniliteral hieroglyphs or their hieratic and demotic counterparts...

 of Egyptian hieroglyphic

Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...

 texts.

History

In 1984 a committee was charged with the task to develop a uniform system for the encoding of hieroglyphic texts on the computer. The resulting Manual for the Encoding of Hieroglyphic Texts for Computer-input (Jan Buurman, Nicolas Grimal, Jochen Hallof, Michael Hainsworth and Dirk van der Plas, Informatique et Egyptologie 2, Paris 1988) is generally shortened to Manuel de Codage. It presents an easy to use way of encoding hieroglyphic writing as well as the abbreviated hieroglyphic transliteration. The encoding system of the Manuel de Codage has since been adopted by international Egyptology

Egyptology

Egyptology is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the AD 4th century. A practitioner of the discipline is an “Egyptologist”...

 as the official common standard for registering hieroglyphic texts on the computer.

Egyptologists have scheduled a revision for 2007 of the Manuel de Codage, in order to ensure broader implementation in current and future software.

List of Gardiner's fundamental uniliteral hieroglyphs and their transliteration

Hieroglyph	Hieratic	Transliteration	MdC	Pronunciation
A		3	A	Perhaps a glottal stop like Arabic "alif", Often written as "a"
i		i	i	Often written as "a" or "i"
i*i		y	y	y
a			a	Perhaps like Arabic "ayin", written as "a"
w		w	w	"oo","u" or "w"
W		w	W	Used instead of the above in later times
b		b	b	b
p		p	p	p
f		f	f	f
m		m	m	m
M		m	M	Used instead of the above in later times
n		n	n	n
N		n	N	Used instead of the above in later times
r		r	r	r, l
ll		l	l	l
h		h	h	h
H			H	Like Semitic "het", written "h"
x			x	Like German or Scottish "ch", written "kh"
X			X	Like German or Scottish "ch", written "kh"
z		s,z	z	s
s		s,z	s	s
S		š	S	sh
q			q	q,k
k		k	k	k
g		g	g	g
t		g	t	t
T			T	"tch", from Middle Egyptian on: t
d		d	d	d
D			D	"dj", from Middle Egyptian on: d; also written as "z"

The MdC specifies a method for electronically encoding complete ancient Egyptian texts, indicating many of the features characterizing hieroglyphic writing such as the placement, orientation, colour, and even size of individual hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs not included in the list of fundamentals are referred to by their Gardiner number

Gardiner's Sign List

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....

. This system is used (though frequently with modifications) by various software packages developed for typesetting hieroglyphic texts (such as WinGlyph, MacScribe, InScribe, Glyphotext, WikiHiero, and others). It is loosely based on the common representation of algebraic formulae. Some of the rules are:

• the "-"-sign concatenates the signs or group of signs between which it is placed.
• the ":"-sign places the first sign or group of signs above the second sign
• the "*"-sign juxtaposes two signs or groups of signs
• the rounded brackets "" form a compact grouping of signs arranged according to the other rules, which is treated as if it were a single sign
• the "< >"-brackets mark cartouches
• the "!"-sign marks an end of line
• the "!!"-sign marks an end of page

Examples

• The name Amenhotep, in hieroglyphs i-mn:n-R4:t*p , would be transliterated thus: i-mn:n-R4:t*p, where mn stands for mn and R4 is the Gardiner number for the Htp hieroglyph. Instead of writing R4, one could use Htp , but not all signs in the Gardiner list can be transliterated in such a way, as there are many hieroglyphs transliterated with the same Latin character in the case of uniliterals and characters in the case of bi- and triliterals. The most frequently used hieroglyph was chosen to be represented by a certain letter or letter combination. Thus n stands for n rather than for S3, which phonetically is represented with n as well.

• In order to add a cartouche
  Cartouche
  In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an ellipse with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under Pharaoh Sneferu, replacing the earlier serekh...
  
  < i-mn:n-R4:t*p > , one would write < i-mn:n-R4:t*p > or < i-mn:n-Htp:t*p >

External links

• Manuel de Codage: A standard system for the computer-encoding of Egyptian transliteration and hieroglyphic texts