U+A722 "Ꜣ" Latin Capital Letter Egyptological Alef Unicode Character
U+A722 "Ꜣ" Latin Capital Letter Egyptological Alef is a specialized letter used primarily in the academic transliteration of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It represents the voiced pharyngeal fricative sound, often denoted by the Egyptian vulture hieroglyph, which is distinct from the glottal stop represented by the Egyptological aleph (typically transcribed with the numeral 3 or a different character). This capital form appears in scholarly texts to transcribe proper names and words from Egyptian sources into Latin script, aiding linguists, Egyptologists, and historians in accurately rendering the original pronunciation and orthography. Its inclusion in Unicode ensures consistent digital representation across research publications, databases, and educational materials related to Egyptology.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+A722 |
| Version Added | 5.1 |
| Name | Latin Capital Letter Egyptological Alef |
| Block | Latin Extended-D |
| General Category | Uppercase Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | Ꜣ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | Ꜣ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xEA 0x9C 0xA2 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0xA722 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x0000A722 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \ua722 |
Unicode Properties
| NFC Quick Check | Yes |
| NFD Quick Check | Yes |
| NFKC Quick Check | Yes |
| NFKD Quick Check | Yes |
| Numeric Type | None |
| Numeric Value | NaN |
| Line Break | Alphabetic |
| Uppercase | Yes |
| Simple Lowercase Code Point | "ꜣ" U+A723 Latin Small Letter Egyptological Alef |
| Lowercase Code Point | "ꜣ" U+A723 Latin Small Letter Egyptological Alef |
| Simple Case Folding | "ꜣ" U+A723 Latin Small Letter Egyptological Alef |
| Case Folding | "ꜣ" U+A723 Latin Small Letter Egyptological Alef |
| Cased | Yes |
| Changes When Casefolded | Yes |
| Changes When Casemapped | Yes |
| Changes When Lowercased | Yes |
| Changes When NFKC Casefolded | Yes |
| NFKC Casefold | "ꜣ" U+A723 Latin Small Letter Egyptological Alef |
| NFKC Simple Casefold | "ꜣ" U+A723 Latin Small Letter Egyptological Alef |
| Script | Latin |
| Script Extensions | Latin |
| Indic Syllabic Category | Other |
| ID Start | Yes |
| XID Start | Yes |
| ID Continue | Yes |
| XID Continue | Yes |
| Alphabetic | Yes |
| Vertical Orientation | Rotated |
| Grapheme Base | Yes |
| Grapheme Cluster Break | Other |
| Word Break | Alphabetic letter |
| Sentence Break | Upper |