ABSTRACT
Exegesis of hieroglyphs in Greek was legitimate because the purpose of the Greek glosses was precisely exegetical, not merely as records of the spoken language, but as ceremonial, as the glyphs were conceived to have originally been used. One aspect of Horapollo's text is often a pressing problem for readers: namely, that what might count, by Horapollo's lights, as a correct explanation might be either lost, at least to post-decipherment Egyptologists, or unprincipled to the point of opacity. Starting from the observation that Horapollo's explanations variously appeal to the referents, causes, and functions of the items depicted by hieroglyphs, as well as formal similarities, relational analogies, and shared attributes alluded to between the glyphs and the phenomena signified, distinguishable senses of 'explanations of meaning' are identifiable. What distinguishes symbolic glyphs is that they are glyphs put to non-pictographic and non-predicative uses.
