The book's central proposition is that the prominent feature of the hiero-glyphic script which
Egyptologists call determinatives makes up an elabo-rate system of classifiers. All items of
the lexicon take motivated pictorial classifiers. By this device the script reflects the map
of knowledgeorganization of ancient Egyptian culture. The book aims to reveal the principles
and constraints governing the codification of the ancient Egyptian universe in this system.
There is to date no comprehensive study either in Egyptology or in cognitive linguistics of
the hieroglyphic classifiers as a structured system. The present work attempts to fill the
existing hiatus by bridging the disciplines of Egyptology and cognitive studies using the
tools of the latter to elucidate the former and thus perhaps arrive at new perspectives on
both. From the Egyptological angle the book deals with the ancient Egyptians' nomenclature for
items in the world and the relationship between lexicon and the knowledge organization. However
the events occurring in the picture-script render cognitive processes visible to our inspection
hundreds of years before they have ripened into the Egyptian language. This visibility bears
directly on a number of crucial questions in cognitive linguistics and ethnobiology. The book
also includes an introduction to the hieroglyphic script.
