Home School - Hieroglyphic Scrolls

We have started our history topic this term on the Egyptians and thought we would start with making "ancient scrolls" and writing and learning about hieroglyphics.

Understand how writing was used in Ancient Egypt.

  

Discussions about characteristic features of the period, including the ideas, beliefs, attitudes through designing a sentence with hieroglyphics.

Materials

• Paper
• Tea
• Coffee

• Hieroglyphic template

• Hair dryer/Oven

I started the lesson off by showing the boys this picture.

I asked the boys if they could clearly identify anything in the picture. They both comfortably recognised our alphabet and William suggested that each picture meant a letter.

I told the boys that in ancient Egypt they wrote on walls, scrolls, statues and every day objects like pots and canopic jars. Each symbol would mean a letter, sound or in some cases a word but we were going to use the above example to write a message.

We had to start by making our scroll:

I remember doing this as a child and went by the "classic" way to do this. Using tea and coffee (cold) we stained a A3 piece of paper.

Once the sheets were wet and stained we needed to dry them as it seemed that they needed to be stained a few times.

To do this we placed our paper in a warm oven but equally drying the paper with a hair dryer would work just as well.

Once the paper was dry we repeated the process and continually stained the paper until it resembled an old parchment. 

Once the paper was fully dried we had to start our writing.

I wanted a sentence that was clear and easy to decipher and code but equally enough to make the boys think carefully about each symbol.

We went with "My name is >name< and I am >age< years old"

Once we had written the first part the boys found it really easy to locate each letter and then the corresponding symbol.

I asked the boys what they thought about the different symbols and why they were used and the both said it was to do with what they saw around them. William continued to say that they worshipped different animals (thanks horrible histories) so he thought that they were used more for that reason.

This is a great afternoon activity to do and both of the boys enjoyed making their scroll and then writing on them. They understood that the culture at that time would have different styles of writing due to their belief and were able to apply this comfortably to their work.

The next part of this is to introduce this as a writing and reading game. I will create different messages and play a "treasure hunt" once each has been deciphered to reinforce what they have learnt here.

What do you think? Will you give this a try?

Feel free to use the hieroglyph chart above and please tag me @mr_kitney and show us your work! The boys and I would love to see!