The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing

The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system consists of several hundred picture signs. The signs can be divided into two classes, phonograms and ideograms. Phonograms represent sounds, much as alphabet letters do. Ideograms are signs that represent whole words or concepts. The first hieroglyphs we know about appeared as early as 3100 BC and only the Sumerian language is believed to be older. Hieroglyph also had a variety of definitions of its own they were written in phonographs or ideograms. The Ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphics to make a record of what their view of the universe was. It is believed that the hieroglyphic system of writing was brought to Egypt by invaders who came from the north-east. The word hieroglyphics is made up of two Greek words hieros which means sacred, and glyphe, which means carving. Ancient Egyptian writing used over 2,000 hieroglyphic characters. The hieroglyphics picture signs can be written from right to left; from left to right; or vertically, reading downwards. Hieroglyphs turned out to be a combination of picture-writing and sound-writing.

This knowledge that we have today is all due to the Rosetta Stone without her we can never translate the Hieroglyphics.



I'll be posting about the Rosetta stone soon.