Time for the next tattoo... need some art help.
May 4, 2012 2:24 PM Subscribe
Where to find different hieroglyphic "font"?
A while ago, I ran across an inspiring quote from an ancient Egyptian text. I want to make it into a tattoo, so I went searching for images online. I was able to find this, but I really don't like the hand-drawn style. I'd like to transform it into a sleeker looking set of hieroglyphics, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to best do that. Most of what I find in searches seems pretty elementary, or the alphabet listed doesn't have all the matching characters, or it is unclear.
Is there a definitive source on this that I could use? Or a person/service that could translate/transform it for me? Thanks.
A while ago, I ran across an inspiring quote from an ancient Egyptian text. I want to make it into a tattoo, so I went searching for images online. I was able to find this, but I really don't like the hand-drawn style. I'd like to transform it into a sleeker looking set of hieroglyphics, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to best do that. Most of what I find in searches seems pretty elementary, or the alphabet listed doesn't have all the matching characters, or it is unclear.
Is there a definitive source on this that I could use? Or a person/service that could translate/transform it for me? Thanks.
Best answer: Unicode Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Range: 13000–1342F. This file contains an excerpt from the character code tables and list of character names for.... You can poke around the Unicode site and find charts, images, PDFs of pretty much anything. I've used the Aegyptus font linked from the Wikipedia page XMLicious mentioned but you may have to work out how to install the font and enter the characters to display them. For example this ( 𓀀 ) is U+1300, if you have a font that displays it would look like a little kneeling man with his arm stretched out.
posted by zengargoyle at 5:17 PM on May 4, 2012
posted by zengargoyle at 5:17 PM on May 4, 2012
Once the font is installed you could just cut and paste each character from the chart in that Wikipedia page; no need to set up a keyboard mapping or anything for a relatively short sequence of characters like this.
posted by XMLicious at 5:40 PM on May 4, 2012
posted by XMLicious at 5:40 PM on May 4, 2012
And if you have any problems putting this together and printing it from the programs you normally use BabelPad should work.
posted by XMLicious at 6:04 PM on May 4, 2012
posted by XMLicious at 6:04 PM on May 4, 2012
Response by poster: I've tried to install Aegyptus and NewGardiner from the links above, but when I open the fonts, they just look like roman letters. I don't know what I'm doing wrong... Help!
posted by emkelley at 9:01 AM on May 5, 2012
posted by emkelley at 9:01 AM on May 5, 2012
Yeah, the font test pages will still just show Latin characters. But if you follow the "chart" link above, can you see the characters in the table? I cannot on my computer - they just show as little squares in Firefox - because I don't have the fonts installed.
posted by XMLicious at 9:07 AM on May 5, 2012
posted by XMLicious at 9:07 AM on May 5, 2012
Response by poster: Nope, they are just blocks in Chrome. I opened the chart link in IE and it is 4 vertical lines bunched together. I've installed, uninstalled, re-installed, no dice.
posted by emkelley at 9:28 AM on May 5, 2012
posted by emkelley at 9:28 AM on May 5, 2012
Hmm. Well, my next suggestion would be to try installing BabelPad, keeping the fonts installed. See if you can select Aegyptus or NewGardiner in the font dropdown at the top and if you can, then try cutting and pasting some of the blocks from the Wikipedia chart into BabelPad and see if that enables you to see them properly.
Also, what version of Windows do you have?
posted by XMLicious at 9:39 AM on May 5, 2012
Also, what version of Windows do you have?
posted by XMLicious at 9:39 AM on May 5, 2012
Response by poster: Windows 7 professional.
I can't change the font in BabelPad from Arial Unicode. However, I opened Character Map and Aegyptus appears correctly there. If I cut and paste into BabelPad it show up as Chinese characters. If I cut and paste into Word though, it's fine--everything appears correctly. It's a start, anyway. Thank you for your help!
posted by emkelley at 9:48 AM on May 5, 2012
I can't change the font in BabelPad from Arial Unicode. However, I opened Character Map and Aegyptus appears correctly there. If I cut and paste into BabelPad it show up as Chinese characters. If I cut and paste into Word though, it's fine--everything appears correctly. It's a start, anyway. Thank you for your help!
posted by emkelley at 9:48 AM on May 5, 2012
Well that sucks. I haven't used Windows 7 but I thought everything having to do with internationalization was supposed to just work automagically. If Word is what you might have used anyways though, at least it's the most important thing that's working.
posted by XMLicious at 10:16 AM on May 5, 2012
posted by XMLicious at 10:16 AM on May 5, 2012
I have vague recollections that Chrome sucks with regards to font usage. You might want to try Firefox. You might also try saving a web page (even if the browser doesn't display it well) and opening it in Word and cut-n-paste directly from document to document. To that end, here's all the Egyptian Heiroglyphs in one chunk.
posted by zengargoyle at 3:27 PM on May 5, 2012
posted by zengargoyle at 3:27 PM on May 5, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by XMLicious at 2:44 PM on May 4, 2012