Letter Selection G M E

I chose the letters G and M because they are my initials and since my first and last names both start with G, I chose E because it is the last letter of my first name.

As I was researching, I looked up the history of alphabets and was particularly interested in the Egyptian heiroglyphic alphabet. The three letters I selected are all found as heiroglyphs, but since the Egyptian alphabet is phonetic the different sounds of the letters as we use them today are represented by different symbols. M was represented as an owl or a wavy line. Hard G was a pot stand and soft G was a swimming serpent. Short E was a vulture and long E was two reed leaves.

Some interesting stories about the letters:

G - The Phoenicians, and the other Semitic peoples of Syria, used a simple graphic form that looks like an upside down V. The symbol was named gimel, which was the Phoenician word for camel possibly because the upside down V looked like the hump of a camel.

E - The hieroglyph evolved into the Phoenician letter called “hé,” which roughly represented the sound of our H. The Greeks could not pronounce the first sound of the letter name so they dropped this part of the name and the Phoenician ‘hé’ became E.

Egyptian Heiroglyphics

http://www.studioarts.net/calligraphy/c2.htm

http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/Articles/Letterseries/LetterM.htm