When comparing modern mobile app iconography to ancient writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphics or Mayan pictographs, it is evident that both types use images to transmit concepts swiftly. For example, consider the “mail” icon in many mobile apps—a basic envelope indicating communication, similar to how Egyptian glyphs employed animals or symbols to describe activities or concepts. Both systems rely on learned metaphors: comprehending an envelope implies “message” in today’s context, much as understanding a bird glyph may signify “soul” or “flying” in ancient times.
Ancient writings, such as Sumerian cuneiform, also served a utilitarian purpose, conveying abstract concepts like ownership or numbers. Similarly, modern icons have evolved as universally known symbols for digital actions: the “trash bin” icon represents deletion, using the physical metaphor of throwing something away. To interact effectively, modern app users must understand the context behind icons, just as they would learn the meanings of ancient scripts.
This is the icon for “Trending” in YouTube. It is symbolizing “fire”, probably representing “fire” or “hot”. If you click on the trending, it will jumped to the page showing the recently hot videos. The fire icon in YouTube metaphor is widely recognized in modern culture to mean something is “hot” or popular, thus giving this icon an instant understanding among users. The metaphor for the YouTube “Trending” icon is direct and modern: fire equals heat, and heat equals attention or excitement.
The fire pictograph in Mayan in the another hand, probably only presenting bonfire. The fire pictograph is having lots curves, and be blowed from the right toward left.
What this communicates today is a simple, functional idea—your delivery address or place of residence. What needs to be learned here is that the house is used as a quick, recognizable symbol for home or location. Unlike its ancient counterparts, this modern icon is straightforward and minimalist, designed purely for function without cultural depth. It uses familiar elements like a roof and walls to signify a home, providing users with an easy and universal representation of a delivery destination.This is the house symbol, used over centuries ago. What this communicated back in the day was – place of stay and shelter. What needs to be learned here is that house – not only means residence, but a place of belonging where people from similar lineage stayed. The Mayan symbol is much more complex to understand at first glance, but as you look deeper you can understand that these are icons which are based out of specific homes used by the Mayans – as it shows the roof, the doors, the windows etc. What this communicates today is your personal profile, representing an individual user’s identity within the app. What needs to be learned here is that this symbol is a simplified version of a human figure, designed for quick recognition. Unlike ancient representations of people, this icon is minimalistic and functional, focusing only on the concept of a single user. It doesn’t communicate deeper details like status or lineage—just the basic idea of an individual profile, allowing users to easily access their account settings and personal data.The person symbol “Winik” signifies a cultural depiction and representation of people that belong to their specific culture. Upon study, I learnt that the glyph changes according to specific person it represents, which helps determine their age, status and rank. The metaphoric representation here is definitely more complex as it uses symbols from the cloud, eye and other glyphs, which signifies that the person is more than a divine and spiritual being.
By looking at both Mayan graphs and airbnb’s icons and graphs, I realized there are many similarity from the creations to their meanings.
The first thing I realized is their shape, you can really tell that each of the icons or graphs are limited to a certain size, and they are all around to be this big, in my personal opinion, I think the creator trying to make people easy to read, and clearly to determine the meaning behind the icons and graphs.
More than that, let me take an example from Mayans’ glyphs, the spirit and the location or map icon from the airbnb. In the spirit glyph, we can easy to see a circle, some curves and many dots in the right size, circles and curves are somehow just like human’s face, and those dots maybe telling a story of spirit and mind since they are full of ideas and thinkings. On the other hand, the airbnb location icon is made by a beacon and a curved paper or map, the beacon can potentially be considered as the location of something, and the map shows the scale. In conclusion, both the glyph and icon are really start with some objects that can be shown a real life thing then people assume the meaning behind to form a complete glyph and icon that everyone can understand and get used to it.
Here is the ‘Browser’ section in Gmail. Multiple icons are used to represent different categories. Such as a trash can is using to symbol spam, a clock is using to symbol delay, etc.
What concepts need to be learned?
I think the concepts behind Gmail’s icons are: 1. All the icons are created based on real-world symbols. 2. Each icon represents a whole word or concept, not just a single letter.
In addition, the appearance of Gmail’s icons and the original Sumerian alphabet, Mayan pictographs, or Egyptian hieroglyphics is different. The original symbols rely more on lines, while Gmail’s icons rely more on shapes.
What metaphors are being used?
Gmail’s: 1.star = important; 2.inbox = mailbox; 3.arrow = sent; 4.plus = create a new; etc.
original Sumerian alphabet: 1.quadrangle = sun; 2.triangle+f = bird; etc.
Prior to X’s rebrand from Twitter, the iconic blue bird Ollie, was the mascot and brand symbol responsible for the platform’s global success. Given Twitters commitment to brand identity, the interface and iconography became tailored to the concept of the blue bird. Such instances include the “Tweet” button being represented by a feather and a “+” symbol. The feather is used in Egyptian hieroglyphics as a symbol of truth and freedom. Similarly in Twitter’s use case, users tweet messages to emphasize their right to freely express and communicate. In a philosophical sense, the feather is a fragment of Twitter’s mascot, because when a user tweets or sends a message, they are adding feathers that allow Ollie to take flight. Without feathers, a bird cannot fly and without users, a company cannot thrive. Both the logo and hieroglyph highlight the motion of the wing, contributing to the idea of progression, taking flight, and rise of the digital age, both using a 2D representation of the bird.
Additionally, Twitter references Egyptian history and lifestyle. Birds were human companions, that enabled humans to deliver messages and communicate with one another. Twitter’s intentional reference to these details collectively contributes to their business motto and branding direction. In all, it is interesting to consider how Egyptian hieroglyphics shaped modern logos and iconography, but also how Egyptian traditions and lifestyle shaped the underlying meaning of modern iconography.
The Facebook icon I have chosen is the speech bubble, and from the Egyptian hieroglyphics, I have chosen the ‘Ankh’ symbol.
What’s being communicated?
Facebook’s icons are used to navigate actions within the app, such as navigation between the news feed, notifications, messages, and profile. These icons are minimalistic and symbolic, representing common actions like a “bell” for notifications or a “speech bubble” for messaging.
In contrast, Egyptian hieroglyphics used pictures to convey ideas, words, or sounds. They were a complex writing system with both phonetic and ideographic elements, often used to document religious texts, daily activities, or official decrees.
Both systems are based on visual communication but serve very different purposes. Facebook’s icons aim to quickly guide users through actions, while Egyptian hieroglyphics communicated detailed messages about life, religion, or authority.
In order to understand Facebook icons, the viewer should be familiar with digital metaphors, where physical objects (bells, speech bubbles) are used to represent concepts such as alerts and communication.
Similarly, in Egyptian hieroglyphics, individuals needed to understand the meaning of various pictographs. The ‘Ankh’ symbol is a teardrop-shaped hoop with a cross connected directly below it, to represent the sun making its path upward and over the horizon, and it symbolizes the many aspects of life, including physical life, eternal life, immortality, death, and reincarnation.
Both systems require users to learn associations between symbols and their meanings, but hieroglyphics were much more extensive and intricate.
Metaphors being used:
The bubble speech icon is a metaphor for conversation, derived from the way speech is represented in cartoons or comics
The ‘Ankh’ symbol represents life and external existence, symbolizing vitality.
Both use metaphors derived from physical, familiar objects, but while Facebook’s icons are designed for quick functional interaction, hieroglyphics carried deeper symbolic meanings rooted in the culture’s worldview.
While Facebook’s iconography and Egyptian hieroglyphics serve vastly different purposes, both rely on visual symbols to communicate. Facebook’s icons are streamlined and designed for quick, universal comprehension, whereas Egyptian hieroglyphics required cultural knowledge and carried profound meaning in them. Both systems use metaphors to convey their messages, but in Facebook, the metaphors are more pragmatic, reflecting the app’s focus on function and usability rather than storytelling or spiritual significance.
Pinterest icons and Mayan Pictographs are similar in the sense that they both use recognizable pictures of real-life objects to represent concepts, actions, or ideas. Pinterest icons are used to indicate different actions or navigation points that can take place on the app; moreover, they are relatively specific to that platform (e.g. “pin” and “board” icons). Mayan hieroglyphics are composed of pictographs, and the combination of images are used to convey syllables and words, which compose their writing system. Similar to Pinterest, life-like pictures are associated with certain meanings.
For both Pinterest and Mayan pictographs, users/readers must learn of their symbolic meaning. For example, Pinterest’s widely known “pin” icon signifies saving an item (“pinning”) to your board (aka save folder), or the heart icon to signify “liking” a post; these all require an understanding of modern digital symbols and real world physical actions. Mayan pictographs require cultural and linguistic context (animals, gods, religions) as the images represent very abstract ideas or objects. This is especially relevant as multiple images can be combined on each block.
Works Cited
Cartwright, Mark. “Maya Writing.” World History Encyclopedia, February 12, 2014. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/655/maya-writing/#references.
I compared the icons in Google Maps to Egyptian hieroglyphics. For Google Maps, some of the icons are obvious while others are more confusing. The microphone icon seems straightforward, since I associate a microphone symbol with verbal speech. This icon is a button that lets the user search with their voice. This concept is easy for me to recognize, however that’s only because I know what a microphone is. Microphones also come in different shapes and sizes, so it may not be as clear that the icon is a microphone unless the user is aware of what a typical microphone icon looks like. The microphone icon is a metaphor since the user doesn’t actually have a microphone that looks like it on their phone. The icon is just communicating the idea of a microphone.
The Egyptian hieroglyphic that I chose is ouroboros. This represents a cycle of life and rebirth. It looks like a serpent eating its tail and forming a circle, creating the eternal cycle of life and rebirth. Ouroboros was not obvious to me, because I am not used to seeing this symbol. To understand the symbol, background information about Egyptian mythology must be known. The serpent eating its tail is a metaphor for the eternal cycle.
Background information must be known in order to understand both the microphone icon and the Ouroboros hieroglyphic. I understood the concepts needed to understand the microphone, however I lacked them for the Ouroboros hieroglyphic. Icons only seem obvious and intuitive if a person has the background concepts to understand them. Both symbols use simplistic imagery to depict more complex concepts.
The two sets of objects I’ve chosen to compare are hieroglyphs from the Mayan culture and icons from a weather app.
1.What’s being communicated?
They both mean “water” and “eyes”.
2.What concepts need to be learned?
The Mayans may have thought they looked like this symbol in the old days and recorded it.
But it means more than the icon in the app; water doesn’t just mean water it also means expected rainfall in the future. And the eyes are not just eyes, they also represent visibility in this case.
3.What metaphors are being used?
I’m guessing that the water in the Mayan script is more in the style of a splash, and the text representing the eye I can slightly interpret as an eye surrounded by a lot of eyelashes surrounding the eye.
The icons in the weather forecast are relatively easy to understand, with the shape of a water drop and the shape of an eye.
This is the “Speak” icon in Google Map, used for inputing user’s voice to the search bar to find a location, it literally looks like a microphone using really simple elements to be express the concept of “Speak”, like most of the modern “Speak” icons. When people see this icon and notice that it’s a microphone, they will understand this icon stands for “Speak” because microphone is the metaphor of talking.
This Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol actually has more than one meanings. It can also represent “eat”, “drink”, “think”, “be silent”, “love”, etc. These meanings are conjectured based on the character’s pose, which is is one knee on the ground and one arm up closing to his mouth. I believe that this symbol tries to express something connect with mouth and head since he is raising arm and being close to his mouth, so all behaviors related with mouth and head can be the possible right answer.
When we look at these two “Speak” icons in different culture backgrounds, they actually don’t really have an obvious similarity. The Google Map “Speak” uses a universal tool that is the symbol of speaking and ancient Egyptians were more direct using a behavior to show the meaning of “Speak”.
This is “shuffle button” from Spotify. Crisscrossing arrows represents the randomization of song order. This icon is simple and intuitive, mainly because of the global familiarity with the symbol.For Spotify users, the learning curve is short. However, the shuffle icon requires users to associate the crossed arrows with the concept of randomness, which may not be obvious to first-time users, but is quickly learned. Even for those users who are not tech savvy.
The Mayan system of writing contains more than 800 characters, including some that are hieroglyphic and other phonetic signs representing syllables. The metaphors used in these pictographs often required cultural and religious knowledge to fully understand.
Spotify’s icons are highly simplified, abstract, and easy to understand, designed for a global, digital audience.Mayan hieroglyphs conveyed more complex and culturally specific ideas, often requiring a deeper understanding of the society’s symbols and language. While both systems rely on visual communication, the level of learning and cultural background required to fully understand Mayan hieroglyphics is much higher.
Before I had thought about why we can understand icons very easily, it’s insane. In my opinion, icons are words too. They are hieroglyphics. Today, I want to talk about the icon in Amazon — “User“
As you can see, this icon wants to let us know he/ she is a human. You can see this human’s head and half of his/ her body. So, you can identify quickly. However, why we can understand it so fast? Let’s look back and see how ancient people write the word “Human” or “Man/ Woman”
After we watched this, we found it similar to the real person. Also, they have the same head and half of body just like the icon we have seen just now. In my opinion, Sumerian alphabets are close to intuition. If we want to let people understand these icons, we should make them simple and close to intuition. Just like this icon and these two words. On the other words, if people can identify an icon very fast and accurately, that meaning is a good icon.
Moreover, the word means man and woman, and man and woman can be understood as human beings. And humans can be understood by us as “I”. Therefore, there’s a similarity between the icon and the words.
One of the most popular mapping software is Google maps which has many modern images and icons. In contrast to ancient hieroglyphics, they are also forms of visual shorthand. Ancient writing, especially Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics, required learning complex associations and meanings associated with culture and language, since literacy was one of the privileges of the nobility.
The following images show the most popular symbols used by Google maps (you can find them elsewhere in your daily life)
Iconography in Google Maps
1. Location Pin Icon
2. Directions Icon
Comparison with Egyptian Hieroglyphics
Egyptian hieroglyphics
Sumerian cuneiform
Location Pin Icon vs. Egyptian Hieroglyph for “Place”
Hieroglyph Appearance: The hieroglyph for “place” or “location” is often a symbol representing a location or a place, sometimes shown as a knotted rope or other
Different: Both icons communicate the concept of a specific location. The location pin is more modern and abstract, while the Egyptian hieroglyph uses a more direct, symbolic representation.
Directions Icon vs. Egyptian Hieroglyph for “Movement”
Hieroglyph Appearance: The hieroglyph for movement or direction might depict a walking figure or a symbol indicating travel.
different: Both icons are used to convey the idea of direction and movement. The Google Maps direction icon uses a straightforward modern metaphor (an arrow), while Egyptian hieroglyphs might use more complex symbols to represent similar concepts.
Summary
Both Google Maps icons and Egyptian hieroglyphs are designed to convey specific information—location and direction. Modern icons use simplified, abstract symbols that are familiar to contemporary users, while Egyptian hieroglyphs rely on more culturally and historically specific symbols. Both systems were effective in their respective eras and technologies, but they reflected different approaches to visual communication and symbolism.
Both systems are effective in their respective times and technologies, but they reflect different approaches to visual communication and symbolism.
Ancient texts/symbols were often more complex than today’s abstracted icons. However, there were also some graphics whose appearance did not change much, still presented in a relatively simple and similar shape. At the same time, the meanings they represent may have changed or increased.
A simple example is “star”:
As you can see, the star in Egyptian hieroglyphics is elementary and intuitive. The pictographic characters of “star” are usually used to represent the night sky, the existence of gods, and eternal celestial bodies. Its shape is often a simple pentagon or hexagon, used to symbolize the stars in the sky, and has symbolic significance in religion and cosmology. This symbol carries profound ideas about the order of the universe and divine power and is part of the Egyptian religious and philosophical system.
And in Application “Instagram”, the star icon symbolizes what post you are truly a favorite. It conveys the meaning of “special” and “worthy of attention”, usually used for special markings.
“Star” presents a simple and easily recognizable shape with pentagonal or hexagonal symmetry in any civilization. At the same time, stars are used to mark or emphasize particularly important things: stars in the physical sense, gods in philosophy and religious systems; And the added meaning of “special attention” in modern times. They are all special, important, and highlighted.
Icon Description: An icon is usually a simplified graphic of a lens in a rectangular box, sometimes with a small dot of a shutter button. This icon expresses the function of “taking a photo” or “photography.”
Message: The camera icon conveys a simple and clear message to users. Clicking this icon opens the camera app, and users can take a photo or record a video.
Concepts to learn: Users do not need to learn unique concepts to understand the meaning of the camera icon because its design is based on the simplified appearance of a real-life camera.
Egyptian hieroglyphics： Eye symbol (𓂀)
Symbol Description: In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the most famous Eye symbol (𓂀) variant is the Eye of Horus, also known as Wadjet. The symbol is usually represented as an eye with a curved line next to it, symbolizing tears.
Message: In ancient Egyptian culture, the Eye of Horus represented protection, healing, restoration, and perfection. It is often considered a talisman that protects the wearer from evil forces. The eye is often endowed with the power of observation and insight, and it is seen as a symbol of wisdom and insight.
Concepts to learn: Understanding the meaning of the Eye of Horus requires understanding ancient Egyptian mythology and the related historical context. Horus was a vital deity whose eye was lost and repaired in a battle with Set; thus, the symbol symbolizes healing and rebirth.
Comparison & Contrast
Form: Both the camera icon and the Eye of Horus are highly visual symbols, but the camera icon is more modern and abstract, while the Eye of Horus is full of cultural symbolism.
Purpose: The camera icon is functional, while the Eye of Horus is a symbolic symbol used as an amulet or decoration.
Message conveyed: The camera icon instructs users to take a photo or open the camera application. The Eye of Horus conveys vision and insight as well as spiritual or supernatural protection and blessing.
Cultural background: The design of the camera icon is based on the needs of modern society and technological progress. At the same time, the Eye of Horus is rooted in ancient Egypt’s religious and cultural traditions.
Ease of use: The camera icon is intuitive and can be understood without explanation. At the same time, the meaning of the Eye of Horus requires knowledge of a particular cultural background to fully understand.
One of the most popular communication apps, WhatsApp, has many modern iconographies. In comparison of the ancient writing system, they are also forms of visual shorthand. The ancient scripts especially the cuneiform from Sumerian, required learning complex associations and meanings tied to culture and language, maybe even the requirement of well-education (as writing is not a common skill in ancient society).
The following pictures show the symbol of WhatsApp and the most popular ones that it uses(and you can find them in other places in normal life)
And take the look of how the ancient Egyptians and ancient Sumerians language:
If we let a person draw the icon of WhatsApp and the one of the pattern of these two ancient language–the fist one should take less time, and that is because the modern design especially the iconographies are tend to be accessible to a global audience, which means to be as clear and simple as possible to be recognized.
Take a look of this example from 1-1 comparison between the “profile” icon from WhatsApp and the pattern stands for “people” from ancient Egyptian.
and this is the icon stands for “you”, or “me”, or “human”
And here’s the language the ancient Egypts used for people:
Modern app icons like the example from WhatsApp are designed for intuitive, universal understanding. The metaphors in WhatsApp are simple and derived from everyday objects, making them accessible to a global audience. In contrast, ancient scripts like hieroglyphics or cuneiform were deeply tied to the cultural and religious contexts of their time, requiring a deeper level of learning and understanding.
