The emergence of writing in Egypt is preceded by several millennia of image production within a continuous cultural substrate. As hieroglyphic writing has retained a very strong iconic character throughout its development, trying to understand the relationships between the archaic forms (at the end of the 4th and 3rd millennia) of this writing with the iconography that precedes it or is contemporary with it, allows us to hope to better understand the links between image and writing. We will address these issues through entrances located at three different levels: the material and plastic level, by dealing with the evolution of the dialectic of the image and its support, at the graphic level by focusing on the choices made for the stylisation of representations, the representation’s conventions and the constitution of a catalogue of signs based on the categories of the real, and finally, at the communicative level, by addressing the nature of the information transmitted on the one hand by writing in its most ancient forms, on the other hand by graphic systems that exist with writing but are not writing themselves.
688 cut out
Seal impressions
Gebel el-Arak Knife
Narmer Palette (recto)
Sesh
Comb
