ABSTRACT
In order to properly assess Horapollo's text as an early contribution in a philological context it is not surprising that the standards applied have typically been those of the historically reconstructed practice of ancient Egypt in recording its language. Hieroglyphic is one of three scripts developed in ancient Egyptian. The other two are hieratic and enchorial. Hieratic is a cursive form of hieroglyphic. Ideograms have typically been taught as sense-rather than sound-signs. They comprise pictograms, ostensibly depicting the object that is meant by the sign, and ideograms, depicting an object the meaning of the sign for which semantically related to the meaning of the word in which the ideogram appears. Porphyry's theory of the first imposition of names, according to which the phenomena of nature are parastatically or representatively signified by the direct application of names, defines the intelligibility of linguistic terms prerequisite for predication.
