ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SLEEP INSPIRATION PART ONE: BECOME A DREAM SCRIBE
Egyptian Word-Magic and Dreams
Creating Your Own Hieroglyphs for Dream Work
Sarah Janes, December 2019
To the Egyptians - the hieroglyphs (medu netjer) were the gods’ words. The God Thoth (God of the moon, magic and writing) thought that hieroglyphs would make the Egyptian people wiser and improve their memory, but the God Re disagreed with this idea and said that writing would make the people lazy, weaken their memory faculties and forget the stories and wisdom passed down through the generations. So taking this into consideration, Thoth and his feminine counterpart and daughter Seshat (credited with inventing writing) gave the gift of writing to just a select few - the Scribes.
HIGH SCRIBE
Contemporary Egyptologists reckon around only 1% of the Egyptian population could read and write hieroglyphs and so a scribe was a very valuable member of Egyptian society, considered to be part of the royal court. They were educated at the ‘House of Life’ - an institution that existed in every reasonably-sized settlement and one which was dedicated to learning and mastering the hieroglyphic system, religious texts and the spiritual wisdom which was central to life throughout the many dynasties of Ancient Egypt. Scribes might go on to become doctors, architects, surveyors, astronomers and accountants but their reading and writing skills were useful to almost everyone in society.
To understand the consciousness of their time, we must try to see the hieroglyph as a magical spell form. The codex of hieroglyphic signs is a toolkit to manifestation, hieroglyphics had the power to imbue vital force and qualities on a described person, animal, natural force, phenomenon or object, it might be viewed as something like a sigil to invoke assistance from a god or other divine power.
WORDPLAY AND PUNS
I have found working with hieroglyphs very useful in dream work. There is something about the way the language operates, at once symbolic, pictorial and phonetic. Puns, wordplay and double-meaning are the language of dreams and are at the heart of the Egyptian hieroglyphic system. If you look at a hieroglyphic symbol and close your eyes, you see the image of the symbol in your mind’s eye, you have a direct link to the essence of the thought.
If you think about our modern languages with their more-or-less abstract letter forms, they represent an extra step of separation away from material reality and a few steps more separation from the divine reality beneath that. The Egyptian system with its vivid and simple symbology is the language of God - the representation of God’s created forms, thought forms and a sort of economy and purity of meaning.
THE SIGN FOR DREAM
The hieroglyphic logogram for ‘dream’ was the sign of an open eye over a bed. The ancient Egyptian word for dream was ‘rswt’ which translates ‘to come awake’ hinting at the experience of conscious (lucid) dreaming perhaps. The symbol for sleep was a bed - so this really looks like: to come awake during sleep. Hieroglyphs operate in complex ways and the pictorial language system contains logograms, phonograms and determinatives. For this reason it contained over a thousand signs at its peak. The decision to create, modify or discard a sign would have been a very careful business and this is something I want you to think about when you embark upon creating your own hieroglyphic system for recording dreams.
I’ve included a list of common hieroglyphs for some inspiration. What do you think they mean?
𓇻𓇮 𓇯 𓇰 𓇱 𓇲 𓇳 𓇴 𓇵 𓁅𓁻 𓁼 𓁽 𓁾 𓁿 𓂀 𓂁 𓂂 𓂃 𓂄 𓂅 𓂆 𓂇 𓂈 𓂉 𓂊 𓂋 𓂌 𓂍 𓂎 𓂏 𓂐 𓂑 𓂒 𓂓 𓂔 𓂕 𓂖 𓂗 𓂘 𓂙 𓂚 𓂛 𓂺𓊖 𓊗 𓊘 𓊙 𓊚 𓊛 𓊜 𓊝 𓊞 𓊟 𓊠 𓊡 𓊢 𓊣 𓊤 𓊥 𓊦 𓊧 𓊨 𓊩 𓊪 𓊫 𓊬 𓊭 𓊮 𓊯 𓊰
DREAM JOURNALLING LIKE AN EGYPTIAN
The next time you write down your dreams, make a point of jotting down any images or symbols that seem pertinent. How would you render an idea, concept or word into a hieroglyphic form? One that communicates the essence of the idea. How would you arrange these separate symbols to convey their meaning most effectively?
Egyptian hieroglyphic carvings can be read from left to right or vice versa, the direction can be ascertained by which way the characters are facing. The arrangement of individual symbols is relatively flexible and the ultimate layout on stonework in particular was often a matter of aesthetic harmony and space.
As a simple exercise, create your own hieroglyphic-type representation of the following words: RIVER, THOUGHT, LOVE, TREE, SPRING, DIVINE, ONE, BIG.
Now create hieroglyphs to represent the sentences in your dream diary entry. Try to make them as clear and direct as possible - so that even if you looked at them several months later, they would still be able to communicate their meaning.
Contemplate the power of your symbols, their economy and directness. Would your symbol be obvious to another person? What are the essential visual aspects of the concept you are trying to convey?
I’d love to know how this exercise goes for you - if you have some dreams you would like to share please get in touch with me via email:
Happy Dreaming!
Sarah Janes