"Hieroglyphic signs could be used to convey either the sense of words or their abstract phonetic components, and in their simplest form were rendered simply in outline, or in cursive, handwritten forms, with little visual similarity to the pictorial originals. Here, however, it is noticeable that the artists who designed and painted these signs invested in them the same level of detail as they would purely pictorial representations of the animals they show. Such is the level of detail involved that, out of context, what are in fact glyphs could easily be mistaken for pictorial illustrations with no semantic meaning, and signs such as this, reproduced by Carter, are indistinguishable from those employed as elements of pictorial scenes elsewhere in the tombs. The curious ram-goat hybrid here, represents the god Khnum, and is complemented by a jug, which in this context has the same phonetic value as the name of the god. It forms part of the name of the tomb owner Khnumhotep, meaning ‘Khnum is satisfied’." – taken from ‘The Archaeological Survey’ by Christopher Naunton in The EES: the early years (http://ift.tt/1K0zwpt).
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