This ‘praenomen’, or throne name, of Ramses II is probably describing him as strong, the chosen one of the sun god Re. Many more forms of writing — from cuneiform to Japanese phonetic scripts — are featured in The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms by Andrew Robinson (Thames & Hudson, £9.95).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ancient Egypt's cryptic hieroglyphs. Nature 403, 595 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35001131
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35001131