In the Beginning was Information

4 The Five Levels of the InformationConceptFigure 9 is a picture of icons cut in stone as they appear in thegraves of pharaohs and on obelisks of ancient Egypt. The questionis whether these pictures represent information or not. So let uscheck them against the three necessary conditions (NC) for identifyinginformation (discussed in more detail in paragraph 4.2):NC 1: A number of symbols are required to establish information.This first condition is satisfied, because we have various differentsymbols like an owl, water waves, a mouth, reeds, etc.NC 2: The sequence of the symbols must be irregular. This conditionis also satisfied, as there are no regularities or periodic patterns.NC 3: The symbols must be written in some recognisable order,such as drawn, printed, chiselled, or engraved in rows, columns,circles, or spirals. In this example the symbols appear in columns.It now seems possible that the given sequence of symbols mightcomprise information, because all three conditions are met. But itcould also be possible that the Egyptians simply loved to decoratetheir monuments. They could have decorated their walls withhieroglyphics 7 , just like we often hang carpets on walls. The truenature of these symbols remained a secret for 15 centuries, becausenobody could assign meanings to them. This situation changedwhen one of Napoleon’s men discovered a piece of black basaltnear the town of Rosetta on the Nile in July 1799. This flat stonewas the size of an ordinary dinner plate and it was exceptionalbecause it contained inscriptions in three languages: 54 lines ofGreek, 32 lines of Demotic, and 14 lines of hieroglyphics. Thetotal of 1419 hieroglyphic symbols includes 166 different ones,7 Greek hierós = sacred; glyptós = chiselled, cut; glyphike téchne = the art of carving(in stone); hieroglyphiká = sacred writing signs of ancient Egyptian pictorialwriting.50