alt Hacker NewsThanks for sharing, interesting they have both left to right and right to left writing form and that it’s so simple and intuitive to tell which way - but I guess now I want to know why they went with this dynamic system? Guessing it’s due to the form/medium and need for fitting things - perhaps like if you enter a room and are reading the wall as you walk through on your right side your are reading right to left as opposed to if the glyphs were on the left wall?
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KolibriFly • yesterday at 2:15 PM
The flexibility seems to come from the fact that writing was never meant to stand alone
Typically in Egyptian tombs, around a doorway the writing faces (literally) the door, so on the left side you read right to left and on the right side you read left to right. I've also seen them written in columns to look like actual columns. I think it's best to think of hieroglyphs as an extension of art / drawing.
(I learned some hieroglyphs at school so this link takes me back! The school's textbook was Barbara Watterson - Introducing Egyptian Hieroglyphs.)