Wittgenstein gives another example of such a projection: ‘In order to understand the essential
nature of a proposition, we should consider hieroglyphic script, which depicts the facts that it
describes.’ (TLP 4.016) This explanation suggests that the projection is something natural. From
the visual characteristics of a hieroglyphic sign for, e.g., a house, we could determine that the
sign represents a house without any prior knowledge. This is, however, not how Egyptian hieroglyphs
represent. Most hieroglyphic signs are (like English letters) phonetic in nature, meaning that the
sign is read independently of its visual characteristics. The phonological value of a sign is
derived from the name of the represented thing by means of the so-called rebus principle according
to which the representation of, for example, a duck  G38  ‘son’ *ziɜ can stand for ‘hard ground’
*sɜt.w due to their similar phonetic structures (analogously, the numeral ‘2’ can stand for the
preposition ‘to’ in English). Cf. Loprieno, 1995, pp. 12f. We can, thus, take the rebus principle
as a peculiar method of projection.


Loprieno, A. (1995). Ancient Egyptian. A Linguistic Introductiuon. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.