Orly Goldwasser

• Professor (Full) at Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The complex Ancient Egyptian (AE) writing system was characterised by widespread use of graphemic classifiers (determinatives): silent (unpronounced) hieroglyphic signs clarifying the meaning or indicating the pronunciation of the host word. The study of classifiers has intensified in recent years with the launch and quick growth of the iClassifier...

This article presents the method applied by the iClassifier (©Goldwasser/Harel/Nikolaev) digital research tool for the study of the linguistic phenomenon of classifiers. The tool was created in 2019 with the objective of curating corpus-based and data-driven documentation of classifier systems. The record of classifiers comprises millions of tokens...

This article presents the method applied by the iClassifier (©Goldwasser/Harel/Nikolaev) digital research tool for the study of the linguistic phenomenon of classifiers. The tool was created in 2019 with the objective of curating corpus-based and data-driven documentation of classifier systems. The record of classifiers comprises millions of tokens...

In the last two decades, we have extensively explored the semantic classifiers in ancient Egyptian scripts, showing how they encode the world from two complementary perspectives: universal cognitive tendencies of classification along with Egyptian society's categorization of the world. Our central hypothesis is that each graphemic classifier in the...

This article explores the role of unpronounced semantic classifiers, also known as graphemic classifiers or determinatives, in three ancient complex scripts: Egyptian, Chinese and Sumerian. These classifiers are silent hieroglyphs, Chinese characters or cuneiform signs that are combined with other signs that carry phonetic information to form a com...

The research effort behind the creation of the iClassifier digital platform is the accurate description of the emic mental landscape of ancient Egypt, as reflected in the classifier system of the Egyptian script. Our central hypothesis is that each semantic classifier in the script system heads a conceptual category.1 Following this hypothesis, col...

A four-day collaborative research workshop aimed at launching and showcasing the new digital iClassifier lab platform (https://iClassifier.pw) developed at the Hebrew University, in the framework of the Israel Science Foundation project 735/17. The workshop starts from the Ancient Egyptian script and offers lectures discussing a range of topics in...

The graphemic classifier system evident in the ancient Egyptian script has been studied in the last two decades as having a parallel structure to that of classifier systems in classifier languages (Bauer 2017; Grinevald 2015; Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012; Lincke & Kammerzell 2012; first analysis as classifiers by Rude 1986, in Craig 1986). Within...

The ancient Egyptian script is unique, both in its iconicity and how it reflects culture-specific signifiers. One type of signifier is the elaborate system of unpronounced graphemic classifiers that follow lexemes in ancient Egyptian scripts. In the framework of ISF grant 735/17, “Classifying the other: The classification of Semitic loanwords in th...

In this revised and extended version of the lecture I presented at the 64th RAI in Innsbruck 2018, I aim to apply modern invention theory to the early history of the alphabet. The modern theory illuminates, as we will see below, a few long-standing problems in the early life of the alphabet.

At the Crossroad of Gender and Classifiers in Ancient Egyptian. Goldwasser/Grinevald In this talk, we argue that two systems of nominal classification - of genders and classifiers - meet in the hieroglyphic writing system of Ancient Egyptian. The special case of co-occurrence of both systems that we will treat here is circumscribed to a crossroad...

This article is dedicated to the memory of Menakhem Shuval, a student at Tel Aviv University. Shuval wrote a Ph.D. thesis on local scarab production in Middle Bronze Age Canaan under the supervision of the late Pirhia Beck and myself. He concentrated on the definition of the local Canaanite scarab industry and collected hundreds of examples, which...

The Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script contains data that shed light on 3 major issues central to current metaphor studies: (a) Where is metaphor, that is, is metaphor linguistic or conceptual? (b) If metaphor is indeed conceptual, does metaphor understanding entail creation of an ad hoc category in which the vehicle is a particularly good exempl...

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing has fascinated philosophers since ancient times, while Egyptologists have often been interested in philosophical and linguistic reflections upon language and writing. This volume shows some of the main results that have arisen from this reciprocal interest, and proves that both disciplines still have many things to say...

The inscriptions on two sherds found during Petrie's excavations at Tell el-Farʿah (South) in 1928-1929 belong to a well-known category of hieratic inscribed sherds from southern Israel/Palestine. They are probably from the period of Ramesses III, and support the contention that the site was one of a group of centers at which taxes, in the form of...

Nearly the last words I heard from Prof. Polotsky on my last meeting with him were: "The young generation should go back to the old masters." There, he said, they would find many of the ideas which were now recycled or hailed as new. It was vital to return to them, both to do them justice, and to refresh our own vision with the primacy of theirs. I...

To the Asiatics, as they were called, the lush Nile Delta, with its open marshlands rich with fish and fowl, was a veritable Garden of Eden. From earliest times, Canaanites and other Asiatics would come and settle here. Indeed, this is the background of the Biblical story of the famine in Canaan that led to Jacob's descent into Egypt (Genesis 46:1–...